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Sonos demoes Alexa control, says more assistants coming

The multiroom music pioneer is starting with Amazon's ​Alexa, but says to expect more AI voice control.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury
2 min read
Sonos

Sonos demonstrated Amazon Alexa voice control of its speakers at an event in Boston yesterday.

Antoine Leblond, Sonos vice president of software, walked onstage and said, "Alexa, pause Sonos" to an Amazon Echo Dot speaker, pausing the music playing over the Play:5 speakers lining the room.

Leblond said the company still had some work to do and that it was "important that we get the experience right."

He continued, "We don't really like that it's not simple or natural enough, so we've been working on that, and when this becomes publicly available all you'll have do is say 'Alexa pause' or 'Alexa play music' or something."

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Sonos' Antoine Leblond demonstrates a working version of Alexa voice control.

 Ty Pendlebury/CNET


While some competitors have chosen one voice assistant over another, as Raumfeld has with Google, Sonos says it is committed to a brand-agnostic voice control system.

The company is believed to be working on speakers that incorporate a far-field microphone instead of having to rely on separate dongles such as the Alexa Dot which was used at the demonstration.

Sonos' new CEO Patrick Spence said Sonos is "engaged with every major voice player out there today" and wants to treat voice control in the same way it approaches music services -- with broad support.

"In the home there are those multiple people that may not rely on one particular voice service but instead multiple ones and we think that's very, very important," Spence said.

The onstage demo was of an internal build, Leblond said, and Sonos was unable to commit to a definite time frame for the public release beyond simply "2017."

At an event in August 2016 the company said that a public beta would be available in early 2017, but the company hasn't said whether this is still on track.