MOH Beeps

I have received so much from the FreePBX community I thought I’d pass-on a little tip (it isn’t much).

My customers aren’t big fans of MOH. “The music is too loud.” “I don’t like the music.” “It is always the same music.” “Your music is distracting.” You get the idea.

I had moved from a Nortel system where people on hold listened to a couple of beeps every 15 seconds.

So I tracked down a WAV of the same beep tones and they’re working great. No complaints. I did have to convert the WAV file in Audacity (can’t even remember how, but it wasn’t difficult). The file, as downloaded, works fine with 3CX, but apparently not with FreePBX/*.

Anyway, here is a link to the site (they’re free, but you do have to register).

http://university-music-on-hold.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=3&zenid=f74bf339bc7c968ed58084689bb370ac

Thanks for this tip! Here’s how to do the conversion.

  1. Download the file (Beep1.wav) from University Music on Hold (link in the original post).
  2. Move all the files in your Music on Hold directory somewhere else, i.e.

cd /var/lib/asterisk
mkdir mohbackup
mv /var/lib/asterisk/moh/* /var/lib/asterisk/mohbackup

  1. Get Beep1.wav onto your PBX Server. The easiest way I found is to put it into a dropbox and then use wget, i.e. login to your Linux box as root and then type

cd /var/lib/asterisk/moh
wget http://(whatever your dropbox says)

  1. The file name should be “Beep1.wav.” Use this command to convert it and save the converted file as Beep2.wav:

sox Beep1.wav -r 8000 -c 1 -s -w Beep2.wav

  1. Delete the original:

rm Beep1.wav

  1. Restart your system

amportal restart

  1. Voila- Your music on hold is now beep on hold!

If you’ve ever worked on the Avaya IP Office Server Edition, they have that Norstar-like beep tone on there as well. I’ve added the appropriate spacing to it, so it repeats at the right interval.

I’ve posted it here. Ironically, the IPO and Asterisk use the same audio file formats, so no conversion necessary. :smile:

Enjoy.

Nice! Thank you…