Sometime, probably close to 20 years ago, but perhaps more recently, you heard a dial tone for the last time and you didn’t even realize it would be.
I heard one about a week ago
Sadly, I had to fax documents recently.
Sadly my parents’ new IP phone service uses the dialtone as some kind of branding trick - you go off-hook and get this “designed” audio prompt that slides into a normal dialtone, presumably to make you remember you’re not just using “the phone”. It was very disconcerting when I first heard it.
I still hear a dial-up modem when I close my eyes
But can you tell the difference between 28.8 and 33.6 just by listening?
I used to confuse my 56k modem in 1998. I used to pick up the phone and make modem noises. It used to “connect”, and then IMMEDIATELY spew out a diarrea of errors that it wasn’t connected.
I miss the 90s…
Ngl I wish I was of the generation where I could’ve acquired this skill. As it is, I just have the faint childhood memory of our home modem. (In my 30s, for reference.)
I don’t understand the need for these. I can’t read text faster than 300 baud anyway.
Wait until this guy learns about webtv, and its ability to load a 320x480 jpg in a little under 10 minutes.
yes
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300, 1200, 2400, 9600, 19.2, and 56k yes.
I don’t remember 28.8 and 33.6 sounds, though. I guess my life has been for nothing :(
Don’t forget 14.4
We tech support folks used to be able to discern a legit US Robotics 56K over a software modem. By listening to our customers connect.
Dial tone still exists. Pretty much every business phone that’s most likely a VoIP line still generates dial tone to the user’s headset.
Indeed, but most people will not hear it anymore as they don’t use business phones, same as ordinary landline phones
You can pick up a payphone anywhere that still has them and most of them will play a dial tone, though those are starting to dwindle.
That’s just sparkling doot
Man, reading this sentence felt like a little electric jolt to the brain as it pieced the memes together.
I listen to it every day at work when connecting to customers alarm systems.
Necromancer
I don’t know. I have several old phones and a touch tone dialing adapter. I like the experience. I can say with high confidence that I’ll hear a dial tone in the future.
Plus, watch any movie from the seventies through the nineties that includes a phone, and you’ll probably hear a dial tone.
What’s even worse is in some countries the file tone was a pretty good match for a guitar note so some musicians would use it as a starting point to tune their guitars.
True, I remember tuning my guitar to it. Thanks for bringing back that memory.
Last time I heard a dial tone was just a second ago when I pushed the speakerphone button on my Cisco ip phone.
Ceci n’est pas une tonalité
It’s actually fake, though. IP phones “play” that. Also, when on a call, they insert "comfort noise, that very low hiss you may hear, to augment the odd feeling most get with crystal clear VOIP audio.
Well, it’s generated in the same way as modern tones are in a telephone exchange, not a played sample. You can usually configure the tone frequencies (never tried on cisco ip phone, but asterisk allows it for its own generated tones and I had a cisco ATA that let you configure them).
So, unless we’re limiting ourselves to the original mechanically generated dial-tones. I’ll consider them for all intents and purposes to be one and the same.
E.g. for the UK on cisco/sipura ATAs you would use the configuration found here https://teamhelp.sipgate.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/208200875-UK-Regional-Settings-Cisco-Linksys-Sipura-Adaptors and as an example (dial tone)
Dial Tone: 350@-19,440@-22;10(*/0/1+2)
The comfort noise is also generally only added when there’s no other noise on the call. This is to prevent you thinking you were disconnected when no-one is talking.
It’s only a dial tone if it comes from a land line
otherwise it’s just sparkling audio lies
Was coming to type this.
You have an odd fetish
Man…first my mom and now you?
My phone makes a dial tone the moment I press a single key on the keypad to make a call. 🤷🏻♂️
It’s not the same as picking up a landline; it’s just the phone app adding it probably to let you know you’re dialing.
Are you sure about that? Dial tone is a sound you hear before dialing, not the sound you hear when you press a key.
I’m old enough to know what a dial tone sounds like. On this phone’s phone app once you hit a key, it’ll make the key tone and then start making the droning dial tone sound until you finish dialing or hit the back button to cancel.
The only reason I can think of for them to put this in the app is to let you know you’ve got it open and some numbers have been pressed to prevent butt dialing. 🤷🏻♂️
if you have tinnitus it never really stopped
Sorry to nitpick… Tinnitus is more likely to introduce high-frequency sound than the 440Hz dial tone. If anything, that is the one frequency that old-timey phone techs would eventually struggle to hear…
My work has landlines, so I still get to hear it
On a similar note for parents: At some point, you did/will pick your child up and then put them down for the last time.
I have a landline, I hear a dial tone every time I pick up the phone.
Low-key way of informing everyone that nobody ever calls your landline.
Or that they’re the ones making all the calls.
My work uses VoIP and when I call anyone I hear a dial tone.
