Dot not responding

[John54]

My dot doesn't always respond to my voice when something is playing on it and you have to shout. Doesn't happen on my echo

[mike27oct]

Normal operation; turn down the volume of the Dot.

[Maff]

My dot doesn't always respond to my voice when something is playing on it and you have to shout. Doesn't happen on my echo

This is also happening, but on my echo in the last couple days. It's a very pronounced difference to how it normally is. In fact Echo does hear me,  but then the blue ring goes out almost instantly.

It's happened before that Amazon tinker behind the scenes, and Alexa becomes hard of hearing for a little while, before getting better again, especially while playing music. I got proper irate last night with a music playing very quietly, I had to shout several times to get her to activate. So annoying!

Hope they sort it soon.

[Jake]

Exactly the same thing has happened with my Echo. On occasion, I've almost had to shout.

[mike27oct]

It all works better if you are closer to the device than across the room from it, or worse.  Sometimes I have had to cup my hands into a "megaphone" while standing above an Echo or Dot to focus my voice on to the mic array.  Such is life sometimes with Alexa devices.

[Maff]

It all works better if you are closer to the device than across the room from it, or worse.  Sometimes I have had to cup my hands into a "megaphone" while standing above an Echo or Dot to focus my voice on to the mic array.  Such is life sometimes with Alexa devices.

I'd say given the difference to how Alexa is currently, in responsiveness to the wake word when playing music, her inability to understand words she has understood for a year with no issue, and generally annoying awkwardness at the moment (I'm finding this anyway) to how she is normally, I think Amazon has made some changes in an update and not for the better. It's all happened before, they are constantly tinkering. Hope it gets better again soon.. I got so annoyed with the lounge echo I proper shouted at it this afternoon, after the 4th attempt to turn on my heating, and her hearing 'meeting'.  Amazon Echo ads have just started appearing on British TV. Not the best time to massively hamper her listening abilities. It would be hard for me to recommend Echo to a friend right now, at least in the last week.

[Maff]

Problem getting worse today on both my Echos. She's pretty much misunderstanding most commands now, when you look back on what she heard in settings, it's gibberish, or "text not available". You can play the recording of the command she heard, and she can pick up voices fine on both echos. Something going on with alexa voice services today I recon. Been going on and getting worse for a week.

[bubbacable]

Hi Maff

Check this out, either they're doing some heavy-duty maintenance work, or they've decided to cut corners:
http://www.echotalk.org/index.php/topic,1002.msg6153.html#msg6153

Whatever it is, it's important to recognise if/when quality of the voice recognition improves.
Use a recording 'note distance/volume' from mic so the 'test commands' are always a constant quality/volume/pitch/tempo.