Server Version#: 1.22.2.4282
Player Version#: x
Web shows that Alexa is playing to a Device, but the device (Sonos Beam) is silent. Doesn’t really matter, have some Sonos One SL-s and they are silent aswell.
Edit: Alexa command is executed on the same device.
I don’t think Plex’s Alexa skill can play to a Sonos device. Music will by default play on the Alexa device itself. Do you have your Alexa device linked to the Sonos speaker and trying to play that way?
Yes it’s the commanding device. The query is executed on the same device.
I don’t know how Alexa works on the Beam, but I’m wondering if it is outputting to the TV and not through it’s internal speakers. Have you tried disconnecting the Beam from the TV and see what happens?
Beam is a soundbar, therefore it does not output sound to TV, it outputs TV sound via its superior speakers.
So I tried it with Sonos One also. Same deal. Best case scenario is that it creates a stream on the server, the speaker (Alexa part) knows that it’s playing something, but there is no sound.
The Alexa command is very specific “tell Plex to play Pink Noise on repeat”. In my library I have a track called “Pink Noise”, which is 8h long, encoded in MP3:
I made a short video (52s) to show how this goes:
Right and that’s what happens when you play something on the TV, the audio goes OUT from the TV through the ARC port IN to the Beam. I just don’t know what happens when Alexa kicks in. Now that the source is the Beam and since it is connected to the TV, the TV may interpret that as input. Like I said, I don’t know how the Beam actually works. Can you try disconnecting the Beam from the TV and see what happens then?
The video is from Sonos One, its just a speaker :).
For the Beam part, the TV has been always off when asked to play audio. Also, I haven’t seen anything on Beam to go to TV via ARC.
Anyway, yeah, One is speaker only, so the problem is the same there. Can see on the small video.
Checking your video, I see what you’re doing now. I tested that playing to my Echo devices and it worked. I don’t have any Sonos devices or other Alexa built-in devices to check. I’ll pass this along to the team to see if someone else can reproduce.
Okay. Echos are just arriving today. I’ll check if it works on my end with an actual Echo device.
Yup. Dot 4 seems to work as expected. Noise started to come out of the speakers :). Sonos (One and Beam) still keep quiet.
Very weird.
Any news?
Can you try again and ping me afterwards? We’re checking on our end to see if there are any errors.
One of the devs has a Sonos One and playback is working so not sure why it doesn’t work for you.
I have just bought Sonos kit - an arc and sub - when i ask Alexa to play something from plex she says she’s going to play it, but then silence. No stream is started on the server. Very disappointed. It says here Getting Started with Alexa Voice Control | Plex Support that Sonos is supported.
Btw I also have Amazon Echo and FireTV devices. Alexa works with Plex on these devices. Also works on my phone.
I did a dump of my logs which I can provide it it helps. In Plex Media Server.log I see the following error:
May 25, 2021 16:50:43.734 [0x549fd430] ERROR - Unable to find client profile for device; platform=Alexa, platformVersion=, device=Alexa, model=
Also I noticed that sometimes a stream appears in the Dashboard on PMS, but other times it doesn’t. Never does my Sonos actually play anything though. :-/
@MovieFan.Plex please help!!
Update: I found if I have the Sonos app open on my phone when I issue the command to Alexa, it captures an error. See attached screenshot removed.
OK. Now I found the error message, searching the forum I found the problem SOLVED! - Cause of Alexa->-Plex->Sonos problems - #20 by astronaut63
So the workaround seems to be that I need to rebuild my library with the loudness analysis switched off. It sounds like it’s a bug at the Sonos end - given that other clients can play music fine via Alexa. Can a plex dev please confirm??
Thanks for that link. I was not aware of that thread. I’ve passed the info along to the team.
I’m not sure Echo devices use the loudness tags at all either. I’m going to ship a release that strips them from the stream. I’ll reply when that is out and have you give it a shot.
@stevelknievel can you try playing music via Alexa on your device again?
What ever you did, it worked! Thanks!
Added an official changelog note and will close this thread: Plex for Alexa - #36 by vanstinator
