4.4. musiconhold.conf

If you plan on selling Asterisk-based telephone systems and you do not change the default music on hold that ships with Asterisk, you are sending the message, loud and clear, that you don’t really know what you are doing.^[56]

^[56] Note that Leif uses the default music, but his excuse is that he’s lazy and wants to go and play Forza on his Xbox. The cobbler’s kids have no shoes.

Part of the problem with music on hold is that while in the past it was common to just plug a radio or CD player into the phone system, the legal reality is that most music licenses do not actually allow you to do this. That’s right: if you want to play music on hold, somebody, somewhere, typically wants you to pay them for the privilege.

So how to deal with this? There are two legal ways: 1) pay for a music on hold license from the copyright holder, or 2) find a source of music that is released under a license suitable for Asterisk.

We’re not here to give you legal advice; you are responsible for understanding what is required of you in order to use a particular piece of music as your music on hold source. What we will do, however, is show you how to take the music you have and make it work with Asterisk.

4.4.1. Converting Music to a Format That Works Best with Asterisk

It’s quite common to have music in MP3 format these days. While Asterisk can use MP3s as a music source, this method is not at all ideal. MP3s are heavily compressed, and in order to play them the CPU has to do some serious work to decompress them in real time. This is fine when you are only playing one song and want to save space on your iPod, but for music on hold, the proper thing to do is convert the MP3 to a format that is easier on the CPU.

$ rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat ...

$ yum install yum-priorities

$ yum install mpg123

If you are familiar with the file formats and have some experience working with audio engineering software such as Audacity, you can convert the files on your PC and upload them to Asterisk. We find it is simpler to upload the source MP3 files to the Asterisk server (say, to the /tmp folder), and then convert them from the command line.

To convert your MP3 files to a format that Asterisk understands, you need to run the commands outlined here (in this example we are using a file named SilentCity.mp3).

4.4.1.1. CentOS

First, convert the MP3 file to a WAV file:

$ mpg123 -w SilentCity.wav SilentCity.mp3

Then, downsample the resulting WAV file to a sampling rate that Asterisk understands:

$ sox SilentCity.wav -t raw -r 8000 -s -w -c 1 SilentCity.sln

4.4.1.2. Ubuntu

If you have not done so already, install sox, and the libsox-fmt-all package:

# sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-all

Then, convert your MP3 file directly to the uncompressed SLN format:

$ sox SilentCity.mp3 -t raw -r 8000 -s -w -c 1 SilentCity.sln

Note:

In newer versions of sox (e.g., version 14.3.0, which shipped with Ubuntu 10.10), the -w option has changed to -2.

4.4.1.3. Completing file conversion

The resulting file will exist in the /tmp folder (or wherever you uploaded to) and needs to be copied to the /var/lib/asterisk/moh folder:

$ cp *.sln /var/lib/asterisk/moh

You now need to reload musiconhold in Asterisk in order to have it recognize your new files:

$ asterisk -rx "module unload res_musiconhold.so"
$ asterisk -rx "module load res_musiconhold.so"

To test that your music is working correctly, add the following to the [UserServices] context in your dialplan:

exten => 664,1,NoOp()
    same => n,Progress()
    same => n,MusicOnHold()