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Mine's due tomorrow. USELESS TECHNOLOGY FTW! I actually have a use for it: I sew in the living room and am currently streaming sound to an Oontz Curve from my laptop. Being able to stream my enormous library directly from the Echo will be good. Amazon's retroactively adding free MP3s of everything I'd ever bought means I have an enormous sound library. I can hardly wait to start saying "Open the pod bay doors,
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Dec 29, 2014 18:00
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 19:40 |
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The Echo arrived. The Amazon lovingly-crafted unboxing experience is very, very silly. The matte black box has three tiny arrowed pull strips. Everything inside the box is lovingly banded in clear plastic, including items like the power brick?!?!?!. The Then you get this big black cylinder. So, yeah, it's a mono speaker, the sound is FM-radio adequate but not spectacular. I'd call it as good as a kitchen radio or a typical manufacturer-installed car radio. That's good enough for me, for what I'm using it for (mood music away from the main sound system.) It's been doing a fine job on recognizing my and my daughter's voices, even when music is playing. However: The word recognizer is *terrible* for classical music. "Alexa, Play Beethoven" told me that I didn't have any Beethoven in my Amazon music library. Ha. It did recognize Beethoven, but something glitched in its searching my library "Alexa, Play i by Magnetic Fields" was also a dead loss. In general, it responds by shuffling music far too often. If it doesn't know that you own an album (for instance, because Amazon's autorip service was blocked), and the album isn't on Prime Music, it plays samples from that album, which is outright annoying. I'd rather that when it doesn't match, it just said "No match". We created an iHeartRadio account for it (it doesn't support Pandora right now) and that works acceptably. In particular, "Alexa, skip" works beautifully. I notice that after 4 or 5 songs it stops playing; I'm not sure if that's an iHeartRadio feature or an Echo bug or what. The suggested queries like "Alexa, what time is it" and "Alexa, what's the weather forecast" worked correctly. I can't see me using "Alexa, Wikipedia" very often; I'd much rather read it myself. The Echo is exactly what I need for situations where I have my hands full and want to listen to music: cooking, sewing, knitting, things like that. I'm keeping mine, and I look forward to see if it's enough of a success that Amazon adds interesting-to-me features.
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Dec 31, 2014 02:23
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Call Me Charlie posted:It could be because your Beethoven was under another artist name. A lot of his stuff from the Amazon store is under his full name or the conductor/orchestra that performed it. You can change that on the web player through your browser but it also changes the cloud files. quote:The sample thing is in there because it either has or will have the ability to buy music directly from the store. I'm not sure because I have no desire to test that out. Last thing I want is for it to spaz out and charge me for something I don't want. Excellent point, and I agree with you. Alexa just correctly answered "How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?", which was fun. I also successfully paired the Echo with my Chromebook, so it's now streaming Pandora. No voice controls, obviously.
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Dec 31, 2014 02:57
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TheJoker138 posted:Like if it's paired to my phone can I do like a normal bluetooth speaker and play from my device to it? Yup.
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Jan 11, 2015 06:07
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TheJoker138 posted:Fantastic, no spending an extra $25 for Amazon Music on top of the $25 I already pay for iTunes match.
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Jan 11, 2015 23:29
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The hilarious thing is talking about Alexa in the room with her. Me to daughter: "Alexa is really stupid about playlists." Alexa: blinks and points an arrow toward me. Daughter: "Sorry, Alexa" Alexa: blinks and points an arrow toward my daughter. I mean, we both feel guilty about being rude to a crudely-implemented imaginary personification of speech recognition.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:21
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I'm pretty stoked about adding Pandora, I have to say. My main complaint about the Echo is that playing classical music is pretty much impossible. "Play Carlo Gesualdo" is completely outside the voice parser's expertise.
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Apr 2, 2015 20:49
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Now that the Echo supports Pandora you will pry it from my cold dead hands. I use the app, start up my favorite channel, and have multiple hours of happy soundtrack with no effort at all. The only problem is that twice now it has heard "Alexa" even though nobody said that, and everybody in the room freaked out at the sound of her voice. Amazon hears all...
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Apr 26, 2015 23:04
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topenga posted:When the Echo thinks it heard her name, we just silently stare at it, trying to teach her it's not all about her, hoping to shame her.
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Apr 27, 2015 16:22
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It's fine for me, both in my music library and on Prime Music. It occurs to me that Amazon hates me as a customer, because I'm not buying music through Alexa.
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Apr 27, 2015 17:56
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This morning I got up to mail saying that Echo now supports the scripting service IfThisThenThat, Ifttt.com. After about ten minutes work, most of that used to figure out the site's annoying visual interface, I'd written a script such that any item I add to Echo's shopping list automatically propagates to my RememberTheMilk shopping list. That's really cool, and makes the built-in shopping list useful to me for the first time. (Four people in my family use RTM as a shared grocery list, so I had no interest in switching to the Amazon list.) I'm really looking forward to exploring what other triggers the Echo IfTTT offers.
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May 2, 2015 21:01
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New Leaf posted:We are new Prime subscribers and this thing looked pretty neat. There is a *lot* of popular music on Prime; I've been having a happy time with just "Play the Lumineers" or "Play Regina Spektor". With Pandora integration, I can have the 'radio' on for hours. It's also great for streaming your laptop or MP3 player or phone or whatever.
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May 5, 2015 18:50
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Call Me Charlie posted:You can pay $25 a year to upload all of your music into Amazon's cloud. It's worth it if you have a large collection and want it where you can access it with voice commands (otherwise, you can just pair a different device to it via Bluetooth and stream them from there - like Arsenic said)
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May 5, 2015 23:48
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Oh, and it has party tricks like "Alexa, will I need an umbrella tomorrow?"New Leaf posted:So it isn't pulling 80's music from things you've uploaded, it's just playing random songs from Amazon's library? e: I tend to look for artists rather than genres.
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May 6, 2015 00:17
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That's the thing. I bought it as an "oh, why not" and as an early adopter didn't get Pandora or ITTT or any of the new cool stuff, but even then, the instant I started using it for easy music I was hooked. You can have my Echo when you invade my house with machine guns. I do wonder if Amazon is happy with the experiment, and when they'll broaden it. I'd like a second Echo for the bedroom because I am lazy. e: I was just dancing around the kitchen to "I can see clearly now" and paused to have Alexa add bread flour and baker's sugar to the shopping list. Soon there will be coconut-lime bread rising. Life is good. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 19:43 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 19:20
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New Leaf posted:Is there a noticeable delay between asking a question or asking for music and getting a response, or is it just as quick as it seems in the commercials? Define "noticeable"? The slowest thing is waiting for Alexa to say "Playing the Lumineers from Amazon Prime" -- the music is instantaneous after that. e: waiting for the voice to finish, not waiting for it to start.
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May 14, 2015 19:44
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How is this my life: Repeatedly shouting at Echo, "Alexa, play 'Your poo poo's hosed Up' by Warren Zevon" and getting back "I can't find 'Your bleep's bleeped up.'" Eventually sorted out that I was saying "Your" instead of "My".
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Jun 18, 2015 18:03
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There is no native iTunes support in Echo. Apple wants you to buy their devices, and they aren't interested in adding value to Amazon's device. If you don't have your music on something that can stream to the Echo, it's not the device for you. Bluetooth just means that you can use Echo as a Bluetooth speaker. It doesn't mean you can control iTunes with voice commands.
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Jun 20, 2015 03:32
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Endless Mike posted:While you're not wrong about Apple, don't act like Amazon isn't just as guilty. You don't see strong integration with Google Music or Spotify, either, and I really wouldn't expect us to, since they're direct competitors to Amazon Prime Music in a way Pandora isn't. TOTALLY in agreement. I'm extremely annoyed that I can't stream some of the stuff I bought from Amazon (on CD) because the streaming rights are locked up at Google Music or Apple or Spotify or whatever. Basically, all the big vendors are trying to lock us in. I have seen this dance before, and I've never liked it.
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Jun 20, 2015 03:46
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Super Dude posted:Building those hooks into their software isn't a 5 minute project. The extremely small user-base of the Echo probably doesn't justify the cost of the development. Maybe when the Echo is more common in households you will see better integration with those services (I wouldn't hold my breath for iTunes though).
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Jun 20, 2015 05:48
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ETB posted:Goons, getting a $50 off offer for this device. Should I get it, and why? Because you want a portable music systemette that responds to voice commands. Once you have committed to that, bonus features include controlling household automation, updating your shopping list, creating timers, and getting weather reports by voice, and continuing rapid expansion. In the year (ish) I've owned mine, it's been a Godsend for "Okay, just play everything I've bought from Amazon by Warren Zevon". It has Pandora support.
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Nov 5, 2015 20:14
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Magnus Praeda posted:I really hope they come out with satellite mini-Echos that I can put in other rooms. I want to be able to tell Alexa to play something in the living room and something else in the office or whatever.
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Nov 5, 2015 22:21
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It depends on the song and the licensing. When I tried to play a couple of the Mountain Goats' biggest hits, they weren't available, although less-popular songs were. Over Christmas, Bing Crosby's White Christmas wasn't there, and to add insult to injury the search function found a horrible karaoke version and played that. Many fewer classical performances aren't licensed. Note that actually owning a song and thus having it in your Amazon Prime library doesn't mean it's available for streaming: that's a separate license. I'd say at least 80% of the time I got the song I wanted; my tastes run to indie. And God, the classical search is horrible, even for things I own.
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Jan 30, 2016 17:28
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Buying a new music service would require them to port all of its infrastructure to Amazon and throw away all the effort they've put into Amazon Prime. It's been done before (Google and Youtube), but requires you to admit your existing solution is a failure. Also, it's not clear whether Spotify's licenses will be transferable to any buyer.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:16
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Alexa is, however, on Fire TV sticks, which run $40 at the moment, $50 with voice remote.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:06
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EugeneJ posted:Is the speaker quality of Echo any good for music? It's mono. Makes me happy for pop songs, but would make an audiophile cry.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:56
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Endless Mike posted:That still seems like something that should be on the regular Echo with a software update, at most. Thanks for the heads-up, guys. I bought a Dot because I've been dying for Alexa for the bedroom. I'm actually going to move Alexa to the bedroom and connect the Dot to the sitting-room speakers, giving higher sound quality there. e: Of course I'm on a first-name basis with Alexa. We're friends.
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Mar 3, 2016 19:09
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:If I'm loading the dishwasher while my older son is complaining about his iPad's battery being dead and my one year old is screaming for more food while my dog is getting into something she shouldn't.... At least in my kitchen, Alexa won't be able to hear you.
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Mar 4, 2016 20:44
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Mine's March 31. 
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Mar 11, 2016 16:29
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who uses personal pronouns to talk about her. Also, I don't call the device the Echo; I tend to call it the Alexa, which of course wakes her up.
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Mar 15, 2016 02:34
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The only record will be with the station itself; some stations show their back playlists on the site. Next time it happens, if you pull up Google search on your Android phone -- don't know what the mechanism is on iPhone -- and press the microphone, Google will listen to the song and tell you what it is and, of course, how to buy it on Google.
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Mar 17, 2016 18:48
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The Tap costs $129 to the Echo's $179. I would expect that one of the design goals for the Tap would have been "Don't undercut the Echo" -- otherwise they're destroying the market for their highest-end product. Compare how the Dot is available only to Echo owners.
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Apr 2, 2016 16:28
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bull3964 posted:You don't need to own an echo to order a dot. You can voice order it from the Amazon app.
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Apr 2, 2016 16:42
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I was way wrong on the Dot; my apologies.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:12
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Hook it up to other things using ITTT? Play stuff in your Amazon music library? Those are the things I use it most for. Halfway through making a PB&J I discover we're about to be out. "Alexa, add peanut butter to the shopping list", then I go back to the PB&J. As it happens, my shopping list is in Remember the Milk, but I used ITTT to hook up Amazon's shopping list to RtM.
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Apr 2, 2016 20:21
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That's the thing. I don't have pockets in most of my clothes, so my phone lives in my purse or on the nearest flat surface. When I'm in the kitchen up to my elbows in bread dough, Echo is right there, ready to reorder flour, play some music, or set a timer for 30 minutes, all of which I can do in rapid succession while kneading. That's why I use it; it's entirely reasonable to decide that it doesn't work for you.
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Apr 3, 2016 01:14
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I just discovered I can say "Alexa, play Radio Suisse Classique" and it knows what I'm talking about (courtesy of TuneIn). It also can do All Things Considered and Morning Edition. (Shut up, she explained.) This is handy, because I live in a hilly area that gets terrible FM reception. Dot set up in sitting room, Alexa now in bedroom. Livin' the dream.
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Apr 4, 2016 02:11
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Use the Alexa app on your phone. I have forgotten the details, but I've controlled Pandora through that app before.
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Apr 4, 2016 02:27
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Huh. I just said "Alexa, play Counting Stars Radio on Pandora", and it worked fine. Furthermore, in the app it opened a card on Home called "Pandora Station" that had a menu item "Browse statements from Pandora". That menu item let me choose any of my other statements. Alexa and I have had our first disagreement. I moved my Echo to the bedroom when I got a Dot. Then we had a power failure and Alexa rebooted and said "Hello" at 3AM. I dropped a note to support, and they said they'd add a feature request to have a "Do not disturb" period.
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Apr 4, 2016 18:20
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 19:40 |
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Having Alexa in the bedroom just came in really handy. I woke up with a migraine and had a contractor coming to the house later. I took medication, said "Alexa, set an alarm for 9:30," and went back to sleep. I didn't really have the concentration to pull out my phone and program in a new alarm; being able to just say a sentence and go back to sleep was great.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:29
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