Amazon is about to murder Sonos

They just introduced a number of new products, including a sub and new “Echo Link” devices that are very similar to the Sonos Connect and Connect:AMP. One plugs into your receiver, the other has a 60W (presumably class-D) amp.

There’s also a microwave and a wall clock, but those are likely of less interest here. Though the Echo Input is supposedly their response to the ChromeCast Audio.

Not much by way of specs so far, but the integration with Amazon Music and Alexa is going to be a big factor for many, I’m sure. If I worked at Sonos, I’d start sending out resumes right about now…

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The most annoying thing is (and Amazon is not alone here) is lack of availability outside the USA. I have a LG tv that has Alexa support in the US but if I try to enable it I get the “not enabled in your region” rubbish.

Do you really want Amazon, Alexa, listening to every thing you say and do. No thanks, for me. All my Alexa devices are unplugged and in the garage, never to be in my house again.

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“Alexa, please reheat the coffee that I left in the microwave forty-five minutes ago.”

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Each to their own. It doesn’t bother me and I like (or would like if I could use it) the functionality.

Looks like it has a microphone which the CCA lacks.

Roon cannot use any of the amazon audio devices as endpoints, can it? Is that functionality even on the roadmap?

Does this inform on Bluesounds latest move…

http://bluos.net/blog/2018/09/05/bluos-3-0-brings-voice-control-deeper-integration-with-crestron-rti-elan-and-lutron-and-more-music-services-to-all-bluos-enabled-devices/

there’s Tidal integration as well. I wonder what happens if you have a HiFi account and try to play a full resolution file via one of the Echo devices?

Fully agree. There’s a reason Amazon devices are so inexpensive. They make that up on the data they collect on you. Really not worth it.

Why does this bother you? Roon collect data on your entire library and everything you play.

Download and install the Roon app from the Play Store and upon installation you will have to give the following permissions:

Identity
Uses one or more of: accounts on the device, profile data

Contacts
Uses contact information

Photos/Media/Files
Uses one or more of: files on the device, such as images, videos, or audio; the device’s external storage

Wi-Fi connection information
Allow the app to view information about Wi-Fi networking, such as whether Wi-Fi is enabled and names of connected Wi-Fi devices.

No getting around this either. Either Grant Permission or App will not install.

Same is true for the Iphone; Ipad but don’t have those particulars at the moment.

–MD

That’s odd and not the same on iOS. I just checked, the Roon app doesn’t have access to any of the things you note. Why would it need contacts or photos/media files? This seems like a misconfiguration of their Android app to me.

Curious, when you checked, did you re-install app?

–MD

No, I checked in Settings, where iOS collects all permissions and lets you turn them on and off per app at any time. But in the name of science, I just deleted and reinstalled the app. No prompts for anything. All it wanted me to do was agree to the Roon terms and then it had me tap on the core I wanted to connect to and that’s it.

So again, I’m pretty sure this is just a matter of a settings file on Android that’s got some wrong values for permissions. Perhaps @support can bring this to the attention of the developers.

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Yup, you nailed it.

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Who said it bothered me? It’s just a personal preference.

All Roon knows about me is my tastes in music, and what they got when I signed up, Roon can’t access a microphone and listen in on what I say, at least I hope not. My personal preference is to defuse myself on the Web as much as possible. I use Bing for search, use Google only for Chromecast Audio and YouTube, no gmail or Google docs for me. I buy mostly Apple products. I use Facebook very rarely, and avoid shopping on Amazon except in the occasional case they have the best price. I’m not giving any of these companies any more data than I can, and I spread it out.

If you read about what these companies know about us it seems I’m being prudent too. But I’ll admit that for the most part it is probably a lost cause.

One could take the opposite point of view (and I am sure the one espoused by these companies) that the more they know about you, your tastes, preferences and habits the better they are able to serve you. :wink:

I am never replacing my Sonos. Good Luck, Amazon, you will need it.

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We see eye to eye.