Page 330 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

• The fidelity on a phone system does not allow for accurate reproduction of tones.
Heavy bass generally sounds terrible, and high frequencies will typically just end
up as noise. Keep the music simple, and it is more likely to sound good.
• Musical tastes are as varied as people, and while it might be nice to try and cover
a wide range of styles, music that is too eclectic is more likely to annoy than en-
lighten.
Classical music addresses all of the above criteria, and it is easy to obtain. It also sounds
classy (go figure!), so it is a pretty safe choice, although we’ll admit it doesn’t usually
score any points in the hipness department.
Asterisk includes three songs with the source code download that are licensed for use
with Asterisk. These songs are intended as samples. Since there are only three of them,
people who call you regularly will quickly tire of them. We have a recurring nightmare
in which the worldwide success of Asterisk means that the human race is forced to
listen to the same three songs as music on hold. That is why we wrote this section for
you.

Randomizing Music on Hold

In a traditional PBX, music on hold usually comes from a single source. Everyone that
is hearing music is hearing the exact same thing at the exact same time, and even when
no one is on hold, the music is still playing. On Asterisk, the music is not playing until
a need for it arises, and each caller gets her own music source. If Asterisk were to simply
start playing songs in the order it found them, each call placed on hold would always
hear the same song starting from the beginning. In order to simulate traditional music
on hold, Asterisk can (and normally should) be set to play the music in a random
fashion. This means that it will select which file to play at random. If you have enough
different songs in your music-on-hold directory, you will minimize the chance that
someone who calls frequently will have to listen to the same songs all of the time.

Conclusion

This chapter could easily become a book (and possibly will one day). We have chosen
a few topics to cover that we think will provide value to most readers, but there are
certainly many more topics that can be discussed. As with so many things in this book,
we have merely scratched the surface.

302 | Chapter 13: Managing Your Asterisk System