question

From what I've read today, your three can have different names: Alexa, Amazon, and Echo. I've also read on the Sonos forum and they (Sonos) state it should work with the line-out of the Echo Dot to the line-in on the Sonos. I've ordered two of the Dots myself for other parts of the home.

I'd imagine cdburn's answer is the correct way you'd want to design your household setup. With the Dot being cheaper and smaller, we'll probably start seeing a lot more multi-Echo homes - it seems like Amazon really needs to get ahead of this by either opening up additional wake words, or allowing the wake word to be arbitrarily defined (side note: FFS, CAN I PLEASE JUST USE THE WORD "COMPUTER" ALREADY? I WANT MY STAR TREK). If your current setup has three devices all within earshot of a particular location in your house, and all three devices use the same wake word, then you're going to run into problems unrelated to playing music. Like if you were to say "Alexa, what time is it?", you'd get three different devices all telling you what time it is. Even worse, if you said "Alexa, order a 5 pound bag of Gummi Bears", you'd get three different devices all placing an order for Gummi Bears, and then you'd have 15lb of Gummi Bears on your hands. Nobody needs 15lb of Gummi Bears. Nobody. Even if you do name them differently, though, you could still end up in a funny situation with Sonos whole home streaming. Lets say you have a Dot, named "Amazon" in one room, and it's hooked up to your Sonos household system. You also have an Echo in another room, named "Alexa". You say "Amazon, play my Kenny G station on Pandora", because you're trying to set the mood for a romantic evening. The melodic stylings of "Careless Whispers" flow throughout your house, and all is good, but then it's commercial time (because you were too cheap to upgrade to a paid Pandora account), and all of a sudden the "Controlled by Your Voice" commercial for the Echo comes on, and that too streams throughout your house. The commercial ends with the narrator saying "Alexa, play my road trip playlist". Now all of a sudden, in the room with the second device, your Echo is blasting Chamillionaire's "Ridin' Dirty" over the top of Pandora's selection of Smooth Jazz in the style of Kenny G. Romantic vibe destroyed (but artistic masterpiece created?)...