Lockdown has meant that many of us have had to make do without going to our favorite places, whether that's the pub or your local beauty spot – and now, Amazon has announced some new Alexa Skills that could help ease some of those lockdown woes.
If you have an Amazon Echo or any other Alexa-powered smart speaker, you can now ask the voice assistant to recreate the ambient sound of some of the places you may have been missing.
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These locations have been picked based on a study of 2,000 British people about the places they have missed the most during lockdown, and include he sound of a bustling cafe, a raucous football stadium, and even the sound of a commute on a busy motorway.
To try out one of these background sounds, just say "Alexa, play café sounds", or "Alexa, play stadium sounds", and your wireless speaker will oblige.
Virtual crowds
While it may be a while before we hear the sound of real-time stadiums, the return of the Premier League to our screens has meant that broadcasters have had to improvise when it comes to creating the right ambience for a football match that corresponds to the action on the pitch.
Like BT Sport and Sky Sports, fixtures shown on Amazon Prime Video come with the option to watch with virtual stadium sounds. According to Amazon, this crowd audio was "developed by EA Sports and recorded in real stadiums during previous live matches", so it should sound pretty authentic.
You can also turn this feature off if you want to listen to the commentary only – that may take some getting used to, though.
