Bose 700 Soundbar and Alexa WILL NOT CANCEL

[tcoury]

My Bose 700 Soundbar sounds great. My BIG problem is with Alexa and it not following commands. If I asked it to play music, works fine, albeit a little slow to respond. The issue is when trying to cancel. Cancel anything the soundbar is doing. If music playing, "Alexa Cancel" it lowers the music, its acknowledgement lights come on, then it just continues playing music. I really cant cancel any function on my soundbar. I will have to change the source b ack to my TV to get the music to stop, or just listen to the timer continue and continue and continue to go off.

VERY Frustrating for something so expensive. MY $10 Amazon Dot works better than a $800 soundbar...

[Vicky_W]

@tcoury, I would love to try and help here. Can I please confirm, before we go into further troubleshooting, does the command 'Alexa, Stop' work?

[tcoury]

Stop does not work. I took video of the problem, but I can't upload that for you. It simply goes quieter, the horizontal white line pulses as it listens to me, then returns to normal volume. The level of volume also doesn't matter. it can be playing music very quietly, but still does not execute the stop or cancel command. Other commands work, like changing the channel I am listening to, setting a timer, etc. Any command that tried to stop something doesn't. if I set a timer, the timer will go off and continue to go off as I frustratingly try to get it to cancel or stop.

[Keith_L]

Thanks for trying that and letting us know! If you have a video that would be helpful to see, ut you wouldn't be able to upload it to the Community directly, you would need to upload it to another video hosting site and share the link on the Community for us to be able to see it.

What music source are you listening to when trying to get Alexa to stop? Is it music from Amazon Music, or Spotify, or a radio station from a service like Tunein? Are you able to get music from any source to stop, or is it only certain sources that don't respond when you try and stop the music with Alexa?

If you were to use the action button (icon in the shape of a circle on top of the soundbar) to activate Alexa and ask her to stop or cancel, would this work at all?

One thing I would definitely recommend doing is resetting the soundbar, by disconnecting it from power for at least 30 seconds, then plugging it back in. Once the lightbar on the front of the soundbar stops blinking, test Alexa again and let me know how it goes!

[tcoury]

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ah7oEZgIjtsjowHvgeBzaUyjg58m?e=COhZzj

Music from any sources STOP. Pandora, SiriusXM, Amazon Music.

As stated earlier, even if I set a timer, and the timer goes off. I can not acknowledge the time, it will continue to go off until it times out.

Pressing the action button on the soundbar does not stop. It acknowledges that it has been pressed by quietening the music, the indicator bar comes on, but after issuing a stop command, it returns to playing music at normal volume

I powered it off for 5 minutes then powered it back on. Issue continues.

[Hector_B]

Thanks for attaching this tcoury, 

This is strange that Alexa doesn't fully complete the command. Let's also explore all of these troubleshooting steps listed here. 

We look forward to hearing back from you with the result of these steps.  

[tcoury]

Before going through the complete reset process, I disabled and enabled the Bose (Not for SoundTouch) skill. That worked and now it will CANCEL as it should. Even with volume up loud, it will recognize my command spoken in a soft tone and CANCEL the music. For a timer, you have to say CANCEL TIMER.

Now that Alexa is working, I have this light on constantly, it never goes off. On before and On after commands and while doing nothing.

 

[tcoury]

Apparently 2 white lights mean audio is paused. If say CANCEL it shouldn't pause. it should CANCEL. CANCEL works to stop playback on all my other Alexa Devices

[tcoury]

The only way I can get the lights to go off, is to change the input in the Bose Music App. I can select TV as the SOURCE and the lights go off, but also my TV is turned on, which is all around a bad solution.

[Keith_L · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the update tcoury, it's great to hear you are now able to use the cancel command with your soundbar!

The lights you are seeing do show that what you were listening to is paused, and this is normal behavior and to be expected when stopping music using Alexa commands. Even if you use the "cancel" command, it will still pause the music rather than completely turn off the soundbar and show the light pattern you have shared.

If you want the lightbar to turn off without you needing to press any buttons on the remote, they will turn off after a certain amount of time by themselves, and you can also enable the Auto-off timer so the soundbar goes into standby after 20 mins of inactivity.

I hope this helps!