Hold music audio quality: why so bad?

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Localeyes

31 posts

Geek

#1510293 10-Mar-2016 08:57

BTR:

As well as the quality being bad most of the time the actual music is awful as well.

I have noticed the hold music twice in the last week.

The first time the music quality and pick was okay, but every time it got to a certain really high note, there was a pause and the note repeated as though someone was pushing a number on the phone a few times.

The other time, the on hold stuff was too loud. It was definitely not a suitable pick for transmitting over the phone (because of the instruments used etc). And it definitely did not end up at my end as music. It was so awful I did hang up.

cr250bromo

222 posts

Master Geek

#1510305 10-Mar-2016 09:19

If you avoid transcoding, use a good quality audio source and normalise each song to a specific level (I use -7db) it sounds pretty good when called from a traditional spark landline IMO - as far as phone lines go. Not much help for callers from mobiles though.

qwertee

709 posts

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#1510333 10-Mar-2016 09:44

One contributing factor for poor audio quality is that telephone bandwidth is limited to 300Hz to 3.4Khz

At least for the POTs service from my telecom experience.

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#1510420 10-Mar-2016 10:47

qwertee:

One contributing factor for poor audio quality is that telephone bandwidth is limited to 300Hz to 3.4Khz

At least for the POTs service from my telecom experience

That's not actually too much of an issue; I used to process music for PABX systems and I would normalise it to about -10dB, bandpass, re-sample and convert it in an audio editor to the correct format (generally, 8-bit 8000Hz A-Law or Mu-Law since that's what is available on a digital phone line and/or G.711 VoIP encoding)

it sounded excellent most of the time. Mobiles and overseas callers however, are a different story (depending how complex the music is). Can't control what happens once it leaves the phone system...

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#1510422 10-Mar-2016 10:51

Play classical music, good luck APRA working out the source for that.

I threw together some hold music in Garage Band, took all of 10 minutes and I'm musically incompetent, so now we have some nice-sounding royalty-free hold music.

@KnightNZ

Geektastic

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#1510499 10-Mar-2016 12:16

stevenz:

Play classical music, good luck APRA working out the source for that.

I threw together some hold music in Garage Band, took all of 10 minutes and I'm musically incompetent, so now we have some nice-sounding royalty-free hold music.

You should sell it....

richms

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#1511602 11-Mar-2016 21:39

I remember when I had a asterisk machine at home dealing with calls, I had popular songs for hold music which I had cranked the bass up and then compressed well beyond what audio should ever be compressed to, so basically flatlining at 0dB for hold music. It was super loud and pumped badly with the bass. Horrible to listen to. I liked it like that since the only people that ended up hearing it I didnt want to talk to. Worse one was "beat it" which was really bad.

If I was to do it again, would probably put some chiptune covers of popular songs on it.

Richard rich.ms

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jnimmo

1097 posts

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#1511603 11-Mar-2016 21:39

What would be really nice is if the mobile networks start offering higher quality calls and not just within their own network but out to the PSTN

blakamin

4431 posts

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#1511607 11-Mar-2016 21:50

Yabanize:

blakamin:

Many years ago a company I worked for supplied hold music. TelstraClear was one of our customers.

The music was the same quality that was put on jukeboxes.

We dealt with the rights BS.

TelstraClear music was flute solos

Not waaaay back then..

Geektastic

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#1511639 11-Mar-2016 22:41

jnimmo:

What would be really nice is if the mobile networks start offering higher quality calls and not just within their own network but out to the PSTN

Within their own network would be nice...

richms

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#1511661 11-Mar-2016 23:11

Geektastic:

Within their own network would be nice...

Vodafone already do. Much better for voice but still crap for hold music compared to a landline.

Have to ask the other 1.5 networks what is taking them so long to do it.

Richard rich.ms

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