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Yamaha's MusicCast will get cozy with Alexa voice control in 2017

Yamaha is the latest company to announce Alexa integration with its own MusicCast multiroom system, which is due to roll out this fall.

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
Yamaha

Yamaha has announced that its multi-room system MusicCast will soon take orders from the Alexa voice assistant.

"MusicCast is the most versatile and powerful wireless multiroom audio system on the market, and the integration with Amazon Alexa makes it even easier to control," said Bob Goedken, general manager of Yamaha's AV division in a press release.

Up to 40 MusicCast products coming this fall -- from standalone speakers to receivers -- will be controllable using an Alexa-enabled speaker such as the Amazon Echo Dot.

Yamaha follows other multi-room systems which have also announced voice control, including Sonos and DTS Play-Fi. One of the biggest challenges, according to Sonos, is making the commands natural. It wants to make its experience as easy as saying "Alexa play music" without a complicated "Alexa tell Sonos to play music in the bedroom" or similar.