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Hold music used to sound better. Here's why.
About this video
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 it appears in the archive
HN links it as the standard answer to why phone hold music sounds poor.
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From the Hacker News discussion
Relevant Tom Scott's "Things You Might Not Know"-Video: "Why Hold Music Sounds Worse Now" - [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗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]: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗Doesn't most carriers heavily "compress" the sound, removing all sounds/frequencies that a human can't hear, etc? [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗