Better Sound for the Amazon Echo 

You're very welcome!

You're welcome. Stay tuned for more voice assistant videos.

Exactly! I've hooked up a trickled-down stereo system to an Echo Dot in my home office. The Echo's sound is now much better and it's very nice never having to touch the receiver or a remote to control the office's music.

In addition to my previous reply, consider this: For the minimal price of an Echo, you've added multiple streaming services to your stereo system (Amazon Music, Pandora, tunein, iHeartRADIO, Spotify, and SiriusXM), plus you can connect a phone, tablet or computer using Bluetooth and stream whatever you can access with that device. All controlled with your voice. In essence, you've done a major update to your system. What a WIN!

Thank you for the kind words. Keep tuned for more to come.

We only sell and install what we would buy or have bought for ourselves. We're very picky. Yamaha is one of the audio brands we prefer.

W Smith, Thank you. There are no settings a user can tweak to change the sensitivity of the microphones. However, you can do some things to help out a bit. -- Move the Echo away from fans (computers, etc.), vents (heating vents, cooling vents, etc. -- They make noise), and noise-making appliances. -- Move the Echo so that there is six to eight inches of space between it's sides and walls or other surfaces (like cabinets and bookcases). -- Make sure there's nothing on top of the Echo. We have one on an end table, and sometimes a magazine will get put down with a corner on the Echo -- Bad human! -- If you find your Echo losing sensitivity over time, reboot it (unplug, wait 10-15 seconds, plug in again). -- And lastly, do what every other voice assistant owner does -- TALK LOUDER. I'm not joking or trying to be snarky. We have four Echo Dots in our house and sometimes we just have to raise our voices. A bit of trivia: Watch your Echo and say, "Alexa." Notice that the ring glows blue and a green bit rotates around. It will stop over the microphone it's using to hear you. Best of luck!

Yes, but you might have to talk louder over the music. Alexa, once she hears her wake word, will lower the volume of the music to hear the rest of what you have to say. Once your interaction is completed, Alexa will raise the music volume back to where it was before you started talking.

Next Step Audio Enhancement great

Scarlet, the receiver in the video has two extra audio inputs (audio1 & audio2). We plugged the Echo into audio1. In the case of the stereo in my home office, I plug it into the CD inputs (I don't have a CD player connected). What I do is set up the receiver for the loudest I would ever want to hear music from an echo turned up to 10. Then I tell Alexa to play at 4 or 5 or whatever. You can leave your receiver on and pay the electrical bill (not much if you're on the grid, nothing if you have solar power). or you can turn the receiver on when you enter the room and off when you exit. In either case, once everything is connected and on, you us Alexa to control music playing on/off and volume. As to streaming from your NAS. The Amazon echo does not stream your local music. To do that, you need to attach a streaming device to your echo via Bluetooth. Here's what my iOS app research has found. I don't have an Android device, so for that you'll have to check out the Google Play Store. Check them out. You might find one you like: Synology has a streaming app, but it only works with Synology NAS devices. I don't have a Synology NAS, so I can't say how well it works. Here's the link: itunes.apple.com/app/ds-audio/id321495303?l=zh&mt=8 mconnect is a generic player: itunes.apple.com/us/app/mconnect-player-free/id507379024?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 rmanager is a generic player: itunes.apple.com/us/app/remote-media-manager-access/id981869721?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 There are others you can also look at. In my house, we started with Western Digital NAS drives and both mconnect and rmanager see those and will stream music stored there. We also have a Linux server which stores all of our music, video, and pictures. mconnect can't see the server, but rmanager can and does stream the music files stored there. Finally, Amazon had a service where you could upload your music and listen to it directly with your echo, or through an app on your phone or tablet. There was a free limited plan and a $25 per year almost unlimited plan. The service worked great (although uploading was a pain). We use this service because we like accessing our music anywhere. It also works fairly well with the echo. !!! WARNING !!! Notice that I talked in past tense in the above description? According to TechCrunch, Amazon is discontinuing this service. Uploading has been disabled as of 12/18/17 and streaming will be turned off in January, 2019. My family will mourn the loss. Here's the article: techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/amazon-music-to-end-support-for-streaming-your-uploaded-mp3s/

Brilliant. ...thanks for your comments very helpful 👍👍👍

I have a question, is it possible to connect the echo with the z5500 with out the TV or any dac/amp in between just pure music and sill get a hi resolution sound...?

You are, of course, correct. We've taken steps to add hardware and software that should make the sound in future videos much better. Stay tuned.

B17NNS 😝😝😝😝😝😝

WTF, your sound is sooo bad we cannot hear you!

a tip : you can watch series at flixzone. I've been using it for watching a lot of movies recently.

The Echo itself does not play, the music is routed to the speakers that you connect.

whats out of date about this?

You're welcome. Come around the back -- I got a used car I'd like to show you.

@@NextStepAudioEnhancement 😂

pedro campos WTF

Totally agree with you. We live, we learn. You won't have the issue on future videos.