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Hold music used to sound better. Here's why.

Tom Scott · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Audio & video engineeringInformation theory & signal processingHistory of computing

What it is

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.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN links it as the standard answer to why phone hold music sounds poor.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2023

What HN commenters said

  1. “Relevant Tom Scott's "Things You Might Not Know"-Video: "Why Hold Music Sounds Worse Now”

    Explains why hold music sounds worse now

    eliaspro, 2018-03 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Why is telephone “hold music” still such poor quality?”

  2. “Tom Scott did a video on it.[0] It basically boils down to telephone switches starting to compress the audio.”

    Switch compression repeatedly degrades hold music quality

    colejohnson66, 2023-07 · Recommendation · in “Computer memory prototype ditches 1s and 0s for denser data storage”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: hold music, audio compression, telephony, tom scott, phone exchanges

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