FYI. There’s an Alexa skill called House Band that’s an implementation of voice control for JRiver Media Center. Team Roon may want to look at it. It allows you to control what gets played to which zones, search for music, select between versions, etc.
What about the echo link?
Voice pause/resume works with Google Assistant speakers. I think it’s built in to the speaker.
I started looking into Alexa voice control (even have a private voice app up on Amazon, started to get local control extension done etc) - this was actually what triggered deep harmony development instead. Roon vs Room was one of the first little annoying problems that I hit, but using a different app word can get around that. There were however many many others - the biggest of which was at the time there was no decent way to implement any kind of useful search without direct access to Roon metadata which for any reasonable size library just isn’t practical to extract using the exist SDK APIs, nor did I think it was going to work that well against the Alexa APIs at the time because of how their voice control is organised.
Technically the whole thing is not hard to do - the amazon API is straight forward enough, but I was never going to be satisfied with just the basic transport control that could be done via harmony integration and speaking a few more words. So the whole thing got put to bed and I went ahead with Harmony instead.
I always intended to revisit it, but have never had the time yet. By now it may be worth another look once some other projects are out of the way as I believe that more functionality has been opened up by Amazon, but not sure if it has opened up enough to give the kind of experience that I want.
(Edit reading back through earlier parts of this thread I see others have looked into this as well and I guess hit similar issues ;))
I have Echos all over the house. They’re good for turning lights on, setting timers, the weather, etc. Simple things with predictably stock commands.
The problem is the devices don’t compete well against any significant background noise.
They can hear the Wake word all right but after that, if there is any background noise (like music playing?), it’s a exercise in frustration.
Since the mics are arrayed circularly around the rim of the Echo the simple solution would be that, when the Wake word is heard, the mic with the strongest signal should be left on and all others turned off. Of course, care would have to be taken in positioning the Echo with reference to any speakers.
That would require different, more expensive hardware and a software rewrite.
As it stands now, in spite of the Amazon propaganda, voice recognition sucks.
This is also an area when Amazon has the advantage as when using an echo as a playback device, then the control word also serves to cause the music to be dimmed/muted to facilitate recognition of commands.
From memory there didn’t seem to be a way to replicate this at the time - like I said - many other problems.
At this point - Alexa turn on music and Alexa turn off music, Alexa play harmony, Alexa pause harmony and after that is Alexa ask harmony to <whatever commands and/or expletives comes to mind> 
Usually its just easier to grab the remote.
This. An Echo playing Amazon Music can lead to a yelling match to overcome potential listening volumes. I suspect that is why the first Echos came with a hand held remote/voice input wand.
I just yell “Alexa!” really loudly, the music quiets, and then Alexa responds to my commands just fine.
Yes, but that only works if you are using Alexa device for playing your music, which most people don’t do.
Using your Extension, I have Alexa control for play/pause (I named it ‘stereo’). I would desperately like to get ‘alexa skip (or next)’ to work but to date have no been able to figure out how to map ‘input usb’ (I believe that is what is used for skip track in the 2.60) to any Alexa responsive commands.
My biggest challenge setting up Alexa to control anything is knowing what syntax to use as most developers don’t seem to list the accepted commands anywhere!
Probably a discussion for the deep harmony thread
But yes - I seem to get a bunch of idiotic responses from alexa with variations of next/skip track, skip forward etc.
Edit:
I have updated the topic at Roon Extension: Deep Harmony - rich feature set for Logitech Harmony with some simple Alexa command that seem to work.
After a couple minutes of fiddling, I have Alexa Play/Pause/Mute/Volume Up/Volume Down/Fast Forward working. for anyone in this thread - this is using Alexa with Logitech Harmony and the extension referenced in the above link.
(@Moderators - apologies if this is making a mess)
It’s quite a nice mess, so by all means continue. 
2 Likes
I bet more people would use Alexa if Roon supported it!
(this thread is clear evidence of that)
Amazon says they have sold more than 100 million devices.
The last time roon said anything about the number of members (subscribers? forum members? don’t know) they said it was approaching 100,000.
Not sure that would move Amazon’s needle. More like a rounding error.
1 Like
P.S. I’d still like to have Alexa control. I can at least do play, pause and volume with Harmony, so there’s that.
Got an Echo Link. It connects to my meridian amp and B&W in ceiling speakers. Does an ok job playing music from a separate Echo Spot. Voice control works OK at the volume I use and the position of the Echo. Alexa does a decent job and lowers the music when it detects I’m talking to it.
Great if Roon could be an approved local audio source. Or I could use the Echo Link as a Roon endpoint. But I suspect that requires Amazon partnership and help. Roon probably needs more users with Echos to get that.
Keep working on it though, it will happen at some point.
Just got back from a beach vacation with extended family. I transferred my Roon license to a laptop, migrated all my music to a portable USB drive and packed up a pair of Audioengine HD3 speakers and a Roon endpoint – all just for the vacation. Once arrived it took me maybe 15 minutes to get it all setup. I then left my ipad out for people to use and gave them instructions on how to download the Roon app to their phones. I was quite proud of it and did a good bit of bragging.
But, ultimately, few people bothered with it. Fortunately, Roon Radio made it easy to keep the music playing for the 1st day or so. But then someone realized that they could pair their Echo Dot with the Audioengine speakers via bluetooth. From that point on, interest in Roon faded and everyone loved asking Alexa to change the music and play their favorite songs and albums.
So, while Roon was a great idea, the use of Alexa, an Echo Dot and a pair of bluetooth speakers worked amazingly well. Sure, Alexa occasionally got it wrong, but not often.
For this reason, I’d love to see Alexa integrated with Roon. But it just may be that this use case simply worked far better and simpler with just Alexa and a bluetooth-paired set of speakers. Sure, the HD3 speakers sounded better via Roon, but not nearly enough to overcome the fun and ease-of-use of just talking to Alexa. And maybe that’s OK.
4 Likes
My Mom is 83 years old and when I got her an echo dot she was hesitant at first but now she can’t live without it. I have to admit I would rather speak what songs or artist I would like to hear especially when I am listening to background music in the house. I think my family and visitors would feel the same.
1 Like
I have Alexa voice control of Roon via an extension that links my Logitech Harmony remote. Voice control is not full featured with this solution, and not for the technically faint of heart but it works and it’s used in my house frequently to pause/play Roon on our main hifi setup.
Native integration would be awesome
Just simple Alexa-voice transport controls would be much welcomed Roon team.
Would much prefer Alexa integration over this Internet Radio hype. Who is in charge of Demand Management at Roon?
So many requests for Alexa and all there is talk about is internet Radio.
If this adds to the On going Roon slowdown give us disable toggles to ignore “ideas” we don’t need bogging down or busying up an already dismal interface.