I can’t make the “fix” work anymore. When starting an official service on the group, multi room works fine. But then asking Plex to play something results in no sound output at all!
The fudge only worked about 30% of the time for me this afternoon. Interesting though it is, it makes getting music via Alexa more aggro than using the streamer, which is better quality anyway, so I wouldn’t use it even if it worked.
Personally, I don’t think amazon like you playing your own music on devices they sell as loss leaders to sell their streaming services.
They’ve knobbled it, and if we work around it they’ll knobble it again. Those of us using Plex to Echo to Link to DAC to serious HiFi will have to find another solution 
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" Those of us using Plex to Echo to Link to DAC to serious HiFi will have to find another solution "
True is true. I will report back on my experience with the 2 Chromecast audios and Plex casting.
I honestly believe that Alexa is the most random technology I’ve ever used in my life. I use music and smart home and that’s it. Very spotty performance, sometimes an update will kill some feature for brief while. And you never know when the update will kill some feature for good. I think it’s partly intentional on the part of Amazon as acampm said.
Regardless, I am guessing 100 different Alexa users are getting very different experiences based on hundreds of factors. For example, it’s apparent from these comments that some people are forced to use the “fix” many times per day. I’ve needed to do it only 3 times in the last 6 months, basically when I started with Alexa/ Plex.
I may have found an answer of sorts - JRiver running on a PC into a good quality DAC via USB is my preferred non voice controlled client. I’ve just found that JRiver has an unofficial Alexa add on. I’m using it now. The voice recognition is pants, but you can list albums by an artist or with a word in the title and select.
JRiver can use Plex as a source if you want (I think).
So far, I can only see how to set up one player though (port forwarding to single PC).
The other bet I can see is a Yamaha streamer available for pre order. Earlier Yam kit can’t accept a command to play an album or track (so I have no idea how they can claim it is “Alexa compatible…”) and the WXAD-10 I bought to try has no digital out, but I think these do. Again, Plex can be used as a source. Mildly spendy though.
Either of these solutions should be much higher quality than the Link.
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Confirmed I am having issues with the “fix” now also, just got it working again, but definitely not seamless anymore and stopped for about 8 hours there,
I encourage you all to go into the edit/selector for your multi-room music setting in your Alexa group.
On Android, the interface has totally changed in the most recent days. You now have the option for the selected speakers being used every time or just when you specify… if you scroll down to the bottom of the screen after clicking on the speakers card in your Alexa group screen you will see this. Also you will see your multi-room speaker groups are now marked as “Not Compatible”
No answer here, but pointing out this part of the software definitely just went through some changes.
EDIT: OK, I all could figure out to help with Plex is… I can no longer say “stop” after saying “Alexa, play music everywhere” to when I get around to saying “Alexa tell plex to play XYZ”
I now have to leave Amazon playing while I give the command. It used to remember it, no longer. So I am happy until it breaks again in 2 hours.
Hope this helps anyone, your results may vary.
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Just wondering if Plex are trying to do anything about this? Have they spoken to Amazon?
I have been wrestling with alexa groups for a while and must say that invoking a group play, say with Amazon, and then quickly substituting a Plex play command does seem to work…at least with 1 song so far. This means the plumbing is present…the will to have this feature is missing.
Yahoo! It’s fixed! Not sure if that’s Plex or Amazon, or if my moaning at Amazon made anyone do a bug fix, but we are back in business!
Great, that looked like being very expensive. Fortunately I haven’t sent my links back yet…
As to Alexa, I could not agree more with the "If I was just starting out I would just run wires.
I am fed up with Amazon and their 20th century devices that do not work as advertised as in yesterday for 16 hours nothing worked except “I am having trouble understanding now, please try again later”.
If I had the dollars to spend I would start a class action against Amazon. However I am running the wires to be done with it. It is amazing how efficient old, well tested technology works and it does away with so many headaches.
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If they Ever fix anything at all I would be surprised .
The system so far is about as reliable as ,well I really can not think of anything that fails as much as the Echo/Dot ecosystem does.
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You are absolutely right. I have never seen any technology as flaky and unreliable as this product line. And I’ve been working in tech for 25 years professionally. Eliza in the 1960s/70s was more reliable.
Since my echos are worth basically very little, I left them in place. I occasionally use them with XM radio but plan to cancel XM pretty soon anyway. Here’s what helps some…
I have all my echos on the same wifi network. I have all my echos on smart plugs and I have an Alexa smart home routine that restarts all the the devices. The sequence of the routine is PLUG GROUP OFF, WAIT 30 SECONDS, PLUG GROUP ON. If that doesn’t work I invoke the routine again and restart my routers at the same time.
The other thing I did 4 months back…I was so tired of the random drawn out responses from Alexa that had nothing to do with what I had asked for. Too many things going wrong and my blood pressure would rise. Even in brief mode, she talks about how she can’t do what your asking half the time. Or she launches some skill on the device you’ve never heard of.
So what I did was put miniplugs that lead nowhere in each of my echo dots - this cancels out their internal speaker which still lets me set the volume for the everywhere group without accidentally having the echo dots produce sound again.
The echos themselves are all set to MUTE so they can never hear me. The result is I never hear Alexa speak. She either does what I ask (or more often doesn’t.) The only thing I ever hear is music playing on the echos from the everywhere group.
I also now have 2 Google Chromecasts in multi-room music group and with Plex Pass I can stream from my tablet or phone. It works very reliably. I am listening to vastly more variety of music now without Alexa in the way. If I were just starting out, I would wire the house.
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