Hold music used to sound better. Here's why. on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2018–2023.
explainer · evergreen
Tom Scott explains why hold music sounds worse than it used to, tracing it to old telephone exchanges and the audio compression applied by modern switches. It is a short visit to the Milton Keynes Museum.
HN links it as the standard answer to why phone hold music sounds poor.
“Tom Scott did a video on it.[0] It basically boils down to telephone switches starting to compress the audio.”
3 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
There's a legitimate reason for that. Tom Scott did a video on it.[0] It basically boils down to telephone switches starting to compress the audio. Compress and decompress multiple times (by various companies) on the way to you, and the quality degrades very quick. [0]: ▶ this video
in “Computer memory prototype ditches 1s and 0s for denser data storage” · View on HN
Relevant Tom Scott's "Things You Might Not Know"-Video: "Why Hold Music Sounds Worse Now" - ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: Why is telephone “hold music” still such poor quality?” · View on HN
Doesn't most carriers heavily "compress" the sound, removing all sounds/frequencies that a human can't hear, etc? ▶ this video
in “Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone” · View on HN