2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2018–2023score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN links it as the standard answer to why phone hold music sounds poor.
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.
“Tom Scott did a video on it.[0] It basically boils down to telephone switches starting to compress the audio.” (HN, 2023)
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]
Switch compression repeatedly degrades hold music quality
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