G.711 Music On Hold

Hi there everyone, just a shortish announcement to say we have now added the G.711 standard to all our individual music on hold/MOH products with CD compilations in G.711 A-law/G.711 u-Law formats coming soon.

The reason why we have added the G.711 A-law/G.711 u-Law format to our individual MOH products is because we often get customers asking us if we can do the conversion from wav or mp3 format to G.711 A-law/G.711 u-Law because their telephone systems will only accept G.711 A-law or G.711 u-Law. So, having the G.711 A-law/G.711 u-Law formats readily available should save time for our customers.

Why are there two different formats you may ask? Well, while G.711 A-law and G.711 u-Law are very similar they are not the same and telephony systems in Europe have been developed to work with the G.711 u-Law while in the US and Japan telephony systems use G.711 A-law.

To prevent clients from buying the wrong version we have bundled both products together. So when a client downloads the zip file they will find two folders inside, one containing the G.711 A-law format and the other containing G.711 u-Law.

Confusion over u-law, mu-law and µ-law is common place, so what is the difference you ask? Well, first thing is that all three refer to the same algorithim and format. The correct name is µ-law but because "µ" looks like a run of the mill "u" some people call the format "u-law" instead of "µ-law". Okay fair enough you say, so why "mu-law"? Where does that come in? Well the "µ" symbol is from the Greek alphabet and guess what? It is pronounced "mu"! So we have the scientific name µ-law, the visual interpretation u-law and last but not least the aural interpetation mu-law. Clear as mud, I know.

So just to recap, White Beetle Ltd now offers its individual MOH products in the following formats:

WAV 41100 khz (stereo)
MP3 320Kbit (stereo)
G.711 A-law/G.711 u-Law (mono, 8-bit,8khz)

That's it for now, thanks for your time.

John