Alexa voice control

i hope others that search google for “alexa roon” respond with their disappointment.

Can those of us who don’t want or need voice control anywhere near our systems speak up too? And folder view has always been rejected as a none starter. If you can find where it was ever promised that would be interesting.

if it is integrated then people have a choice whether they want to use voice activation or not. Choice is a good thing as is embracing future technologies.

Then turn it off or don’t use it.
That’s like saying you don’t want a program to support DSD files…just because you don’t use it, why not want a feature that will hinder others desires, just because you are old school.

Can those of us who don’t want or need voice control anywhere near our systems speak up too? And folder view has always been rejected as a none starter. If you can find where it was ever promised that would be interesting.

At an audio show before roon was that popular…several people complalning about it, and they offered a workaround that doesn’t quite work, but was told they would make it available eventually. Just like they did say they would support alexa before…both have been years ago…i think they need more programmers or a good one or two.

If you can find where it was ever promised that would be interesting.

That is nonsense…thats like saying your android phone used as a controller will degrade sq also…

Alexa will introduce so many negatives to sound quality.

Ok so the API is state based so not RESTful, that makes sense but will probably make the Alexa App harder to write would have to keep checking current state at start of each intent (Ive only done a very limited amount of work with Lambda, so more informed please pipe up).

For those who dont want it, not using it and it being there shouldnt be an issue, most of the new code is likely to exist on the AWS side, so it wont even be on your harddrive let alone loaded into memory of any of your devices.

Using Alexa as an end point will be poor-ish compared to a system costing over 100x as much, but personally for the price of the bigger Alexa devices, bang for buck they are really good and small, and as background do a fairly good job. Flowing the sound through Alexa and out via Bluetooth is degrading quality again, but if your Bluetooth enabled speaker system hasnt got a Roon endpoint attached, it will do the job, if your system does have a Roon end point attached dont think anyone would recommend having the Alexa in the signal chain.

As a controller to the main system I can see this being useful for not just controlling background music. for example you in the kitchen hands covered in whatever you cooking and system blasting next door and you want to quickly talk to your family/guests, being able to verbally pause the music from the other room is useful here.

People that dont want an Alexa App should be allowed to have a voice too, as the development team are clearly small and have a limited amount they can work on, having feedback of features they prefer to be developed first can only help Roon dedicate the resources they have on what most customers want… that said “not an Alexa app” doesnt really give the dev guys much to go on :slight_smile:

You will probably want to use AWS lambdas for the intend handling, AWS fanouts for managing web sockets from in-home endpoints with the roon stateful integration running at home as a node app somewhere convenient. Probably easiest if users create/use an amazon account for the oauth bit with alexa.

That is roughly what I envision for the multi-user version of what I am currently doing for myself initially. I made a start and parked it while I more fully aquaint myself with roon by doing a much richer harmony integration which is close to complete along with some minor fixes and improvements for the harmony node libraries which I hope to share with the original authors soon.

I had a quick look at the possibilities for two modes - regular single action mode (simple intents) and a session mode for more involved interaction that will also potentially allow use of the spot/show as now playing display and very basic touch control (play pause and maybe volume next prev) devices. It seems that the existing now playing line format will be a good fit for the show and spot in session mode as well being a much better fit for the way the browse api works. I don’t really hold out a lot of hope for getting good voice search working, but I havnt really tried yet either.

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I wish I could skip songs using Alexa when playing Roon through my Sonos Ones.

This is a little OT but does anyone know of any way it may be possible to cast music from Alexa (e.g. an echo dot) to another device via Airplay. This would at least allow other members in my household to voice control some music and play onto proper speakers (via Volumio on a RPi). I read that it’s recently possible to do the reverse but haven’t come across anything this way round.

Echo does not support airplay (as far as I know). Bluetooth is the only wireless option from an echo.

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Ah, thanks, worth checking. Guess I may see if there’s any cheap bluetooth options that might work with the RPi setup then.

Can Cortana be used to control Roon? I don’t really care that it is not Alexa. Just hook up a microphone to a Windows PC which is the Roon client.

Has anyone tried this?

Bump for this functionality. My use case is not when I’m seated, proper listening, it’s when random or Roon Radio is playing and I want to skip the song that was chosen from an adjoining room like while cooking in the kitchen. Far easier to speak than touch the iPad or remote.

I have Alexa in most rooms of the house. The sound from the speakers is not a problem in all but my main listening room where I use an iPad and physical remote along with @Adam_Goodfellow fine Extension integrating Logitech Harmony.

Agreed. I have Echo dots that send audio back to the Audio matrix via the 3.5mm audio jack, via balun, then via UTP. It works, but it’s not exactly audiophile :wink: Would love to have Roon integration for voice control.

I have an Echo Link which I was considering connecting to my main system, but it might be better served as the actual input to the audio matrix — suprisingly enough, the Echo Link thing does not even have a microphone array, but is designed to be used as a slave to another echo device.

In any case, am now evaluating Roon and impressed so far. So wish the OPPO UDP-203 Roon Ready capability included multichannel output. If Roon and Amazon could play nice, the Link could even be a pretty reasonably priced Roon Endpoint.

Also looking at the Echo Link - I want an easy, convenient family friendly way to tell “Alexa, play Radio 1 in the kitchen” or “Alexa, play Spotify in the Living Room”. Does that work well for you Tom?

I use Roon for my own, better quality music. I currently play that through old Logitech devices. Have you tried connecting another source to the Echo Link via the digital or analogue in? How do you then control that? Via Alexa or just via the app?

Wondering if this is a cheap way to add Alexa convenience while keeping Roon as is - or if I’m better looking at the BlueSound Node 2i?

Thoughts anyone?

The Roon lads tried to integrate Roon and Alexia. They couldn’t get it to work

I have Echo devices strewn all over the house. In spite of what Amazon would have people believe, the voice recognition isn’t very good.

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Finding Alexa works well for me.

Interested to understand how Sonos, BlueSound and others have made Alexa and Google Assistant work where the Roon team could not?

I think it was the issue of identifying “Roon” vs “Room” and that the voice identification gets spotty when music is being played, aka noisy environments. Personally, I think that they moved on to Chromecast and really hadn’t looked back.

I can say that different Echo products have varying degrees of voice recognition in “noisy” environments. The Echo Show is horrible for voice recog. On the other hand, my Insignia google speaker has great voice recog even while it is playing music.

That being said, Echo products have probably gotten better since my last Echo purchase (the Show when it was released - mid 2017).

I have multiple Echos, Chromecasts, Apple TVs, Sonos speakers, and Logitech Harmony Hubs. This is what I do for the best experience with Roon and voice (I would love to know if there is more that I can do). I use AirPlay 2 with the Apple TVs and Sonos to distribute my music throughout my home, and I use the Chromecasts to show what’s playing on my TVs (love this). I setup an Alexa routine “Alexa, AirPlay” which turns on my TVs (1 with Apple TV, 2 TVs with Chromecasts to show what’s playing), and the Apple TV is joined by my Sonos speakers all using AirPlay 2 for sound (I can’t get it to auto-play though as part of the routine - I have to manually hit Play on one of my Roon Remote tablets). I can then use my voice to skip songs “Alexa, skip song” which always works (not sure how, but it does…I believe by using AirPlay to skip because I can use Apple TV remote to pause/play/skip). What I can’t do is pause/stop or resume/play with my voice using Alexa which I would love to be able to do (it just ignores these commands) … but “skip song” always works, which is nice.

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