[asterisk-users] Crickets. Yes, crickets.

[John Todd]

How many times have you been on a conference call and some other  
participant puts their line on hold, leading to their hold music  
making conversation impossible for the rest of the group?

This scenario happens to me all the time and it drives me NUTS.  I  
prefer no hold music, because I am often on conference calls, and I  
also usually hate listening to music on the phone when I usually have  
my own music playing in the background as well.  And most hold music  
is really bad.  However, there is a valid reason for hold music and  
that is to let the caller know via an audio cue that they have not  
been disconnected.

So I heard about some really great hold audio the other day.  It was  
the sound of crickets chirping quietly, every 5-8 seconds, seemingly  
randomly.  It was actually just a 2 or 3 minute recording of a few  
different cricket sounds, recorded at low gain.  It was unobtrusive  
enough to not interrupt speakers on the call, yet if it was for a  
single listener it was enough audio to be obvious that the other  
speaker was still "on hold".

I have made some of the sounds in the past (tt-monkeys.gsm comes to  
mind) but at the moment I am pretty much tapped out for time and even  
trivial things like making sound files are difficult, though I can  
type messages to asterisk-users well enough, as I sit ironically on  
hold.

Does anyone want to take up the task?  While as usual I can't  
guarantee inclusion of any resulting soundfile into Asterisk, it would  
certainly get _my_ vote.

JT

---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/