Ma Bell's recordings..

[dacflyer]

with today's technology etc,, why are the telephone messages so horrible in quality ?
i am sure they are done like this on purpose...or ?
Ex. number disconnected, number cannot be completed as dialed,
number cannot be completed by this method, etc..

[Lenp]

Maybe it's a DRM issue.
The 1950 copyright holder that recorded the messages might have a lifetime deal.
I like the messages that are followed by a string of numbers
that may mean something to somebody!

[dacflyer]

ya, even the modern messages are super staticy, and have a ton of background noise.

[Lenp]

Maybe the announcement comes off an Edison cylinder machine that Tom gave Alex?

Mine sounds a lot like that.
Let's all call 411 and ask them!

[jwax]

I fully agree dacflyer! The really sad thing is most business people, especially contractors, use cellphones with that S**TTY audio. Actual communication is pitiful.
Bring back the old copper-wired duplex of yesteryear when two people could actually communicate on the phone!

[haklesup]

can anyone hear a pin drop anymore (remember the sprint analog commercials)

Most recordings I hear sound fine but I do get a fair amount of distortion probably from packet delays in the network. Primarily echos of my own voice or choppy picket fence audio

[Lenp]

Along with the technology comes issues with data transmission, like FAX, alarm and POS
terminals. The narrow bandwith of the POTS line was bad enough but now sometimes data is impossible. Like a satellite link, it's speed, clobbered by high latency, yields mediocre throughput.

[Externet]

Old POTS sound quality and intelligibility was excellent.

Modern digital garbage ! Managed by clumsy engineering and marketing seeking more and more $. Sounds like chinese ´technology´

[dacflyer]

i especially hate cell calls, they sound quality is horrible, i have to strain to understand what most people are saying.. and forget it if someone has a high voice. i have a friend that has a high grainy voice, and it is almost impossible to understand her in person..lol

[Lenp]

Years ago I designed a POTS audio interface so two remote locations could share 'guest' speakers. It had only a hand full of parts and in spite of the narrow telco bandwidth, the audio was quite presentable. One of the limiting things in older telephony was the rugged as a rock, carbon element microphone. In the 20's companies, like Musak, made fortunes distributing 'elevator music' over leased lines. Today it's probably not worth sending audio with cell phones and even the land line may be degraded because of all the A/D-D/A conversions. Often, music on hold is pretty crappy.

Side note:
Years ago, when cassette tapes were the 'in' thing, The company I worked for sold and serviced the Infonics high speed cassette duplicators. These were cabinets with a master cassette deck and several slave decks. Additional slave cabinets could be daisy chained, so in a few minutes the machines could make many copies. Because the tape speed really screamed, the frequency of the audio went into the RF region. We had more than a few meetings and much discussion, to try to figure a way around the POTS bandwidth limitation so we could send audio from the machine at high speed, across the lines, just to transmit a copy quickly. Nope, no such success was had in those days because the technology of sampling, compression, expanding just was not there yet, and maybe, not even now.

Sometimes it's One step forward.....and you are still in the same pace!

[gerty]

[quote]i especially hate cell calls, they sound quality is horrible, i have to strain to understand what most people are saying.. and forget it if someone has a high voice. i have a friend that has a high grainy voice, and it is almost impossible to understand her in person..lol
[/quote]
I have 2 friends and I have a terrible time trying to understand them on a cellphone, the rest, not quite as bad, but i better be in a quiet area..

[dacflyer]

anyone notice that some places you call the n hold musik or spiel is broken up or has hissing in place of the broken parts,,
i found out that the ones that used a SD chip. the chip was so worn out after playing thousands of times over and over..
Home Depot is bad for that.. or even worse they have the audio turned up so loud that it is distorted..

[Externet]

...Today it's probably not worth sending audio with cell phones and even the land line may be degraded because of all the A/D-D/A conversions.

Today's POTS landlines also use A->D and D->A conversion. That is the way audio travels between COs.

[Lenp]

This is a historic wonder that has lasted the test of time with proven reliability, charm, economy, and it really sounds about the same as our present technoolgy!
http://valhallamovement.com/wp-content/ ... ephone.jpg
User Notes:
Pluck cord to ring
Use a longer cord for long distance circuits
Tie another line midway for conference calls

Enjoy!

[Joseph]

I just recently was thinking of those. There was a piece on I think NPR about a school science project in which one had to get a message sent a short distance. They were talking about lobbing wadded notes. However the first thing that came to my mind was the stretched string and two sounding devices, one on each end.

I remember how the landlines kept operating after bad storms, even though the electricity was out. The system was an early-developed network I guess.