Why Buy On Hold Music?

There are many reasons to buy on hold music for your business and in this small article I will briefly outline these reasons and also offer some insight into what is really available to you in terms of On hold music and what your business should be looking for.

First things first, when a caller to your business is put on hold the fact that they can hear music through their earpiece assures them that their call is still connected. Obviously this means they are much less likely to hang up through uncertainty.

Secondly, hearing music helps the caller to not focus too much on the amount of time they are waiting for your response.

Important though is the music they hear because if the music is of bad quality, which in many cases it is, the caller will become more impatient and is more likely to hang up. The most frequently used On Hold music in the United Kingdom is Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It is very, very clichéd to use mainstream classical music and the main reason it is used is that it has no copyright and is therefore free. Using clichéd music shows that the business has not thought about their on hold music very much at all and that it is not really concerned about what the caller hears while on hold. Not a good sign.

Look at your on hold music as a way of advertising or of pulling your customer in. If you pay thousands of dollars a year in advertising why your lose your potential customer at the last and smallest hurdle by subjecting them to corny and unoriginal music? Show some class, buy some music that matches the aesthetic or image of your business. You want something more relevant to your business not just some badly put together elevator music that you bought for ten bucks off the internet. Give your potential customer a good feeling about your business. Stand out from the crowd.

If you look at badly made corporate films their music is usually one of the reasons they seem so bad. A good corporate film always has good music to underline the meaning of the film. Listen to your On Hold music in this way. If your company sells pizzas then obviously you would look for some happy sounding Italian folk music. If your company sells software you probably want something more contemporary and state of the art. Where you are in the world obviously has an impact too, especially if your company operates at a local level. For example, the music tastes of people living in Texas are not the same as people living in New York State. There are lots of on hold music companies out there but all were not created equal. Look for quality and relevance not just a cheap bargain that you yourself cannot bear to listen to.

Have a listen to the On Hold Music at White Beetle.

Your Analogue Mixing Desk: Think Twice Before Selling It.

Recently on a trip to Wales I had the good fortune to sit in with a very good sound engineer who was mixing down five tracks for a band that he had recorded. The engineer, who shall remain nameless in this article, had basically set up a digital studio in a farm house and was using an adjacent barn to record in. He had a multi core going from the barn into a small room in his cottage that was essentially his control room.

His basic set up was a 24 into 4 into 2 Behringer mixing desk which was hooked up to two delta 10/10s which were in turn connected to his PC ( a 64 bit AMD chip on an ASUS board….. that is if I am not mistaken). As a software sequencer he was using Cubase SX3 with the waves diamond pack, the waves SSL pack and an assortment of other plug-ins that I was less familiar with. He also had a Behringer stereo valve pre amp and a couple of stereo compressors. Pretty modest you might think, and you might be right but I soon found out he did not need much more. His microphone collection was nice I thought with a Neumann TLM 103 being the pick of the bunch and a Shure SM57 and AKG D112 shoring things up in the drum department.

The band he was recording was a metal outfit who were good musicians and the music being mixed displayed much prowess in structure, melody and dynamics. This however does mean it was easy to mix. When I arrived the engineer and the band’s manager were ruminating over the snare sound. In fact it was the first thing I noticed when I came in and as the afternoon wore on it became clear that this was really the only problem with the mixes. Generally speaking, though, the music sounded pretty damn good and after I made a few coffees and teas I started to ask a few questions about the engineers set up. He was the first one to admit that his gear was ordinary and that he even bought the desk second hand on EBay for less than two hundred pounds. That said, he used twelve microphones to record the drum kit and its overall sound was jaw dropping.

The engineers main point about not having an expensive set up was that you just do not need it. Why? He told me that the most important piece of equipment is your ears and of course he is right. Afterwards, he argued, knowing where to put the microphone, getting enough signal to tape, knowing how to use EQ, compression, and reverb were essential and these skills, as many of us know, take some time to master. Some never get the hang of these skills completely completely and not knowing what you are doing is going to sound just as bad through a Neve desk as it is through a Behringer desk. Point is: Technical prowess does not come in a box and there is no silver bullet.

To eliminate room sounds when recording in less than ideal environments he advocated recording as close and dry as possible and being isolated from the source obviously gives you the chance to hear what you are recording and make those essential adjustments before going for a take. A close sound could easily be made to sound more back in the mix or larger with convolution reverbs or with other types or reverbs and delays.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I discovered was how he routed his soundcards into and out of his mixing desk. Bearing in mind that most people recording with a modest setup seem to only use their analogue mixing desk for tracking and then stay in the digital domain even until after mix down. This engineer had four stereo group tracks, as well as his Buss Mix going from Cubase, through his Delta 10/10’s into his mixing desk. Of course he had routed some back into Cubase. What is the point you might ask? Well, lots to be honest. Firstly, he could easily EQ any of the stereo groups using his analogue EQ’s on his desk and I do not care what anybody says, using an analogue Equalizer is more intuitive and usually sounds better than using a digital equalizer. Remember you can send reverb and effect sends out onto these stereo Busses. This gives you much more hands on access to your mix and can really help you shape your mix or identify where it is going wrong.

He also had hands on control for muting, soloing and fading. He could easily route them back into Cubase if he wanted. He could use his outboard compressors and valve pre amps which were all patched into his desk auxiliaries and patch bay. The master Buss on his Behringer desk, had become, in real terms “The” Master Buss and was routed back into Cubase when he wanted to run off a mix.

There is no doubt to my mind that the analogue desk and outboard gear also really helps your mix to sound, well, more “Real” and warmer. Driving home, I was reconfiguring my own studio in my head and I have finished my reconfiguring and have started mixing and remixing pieces for my royalty free music website. In fact I am really happy as I have realized that I now want to keep and utilize much of the analogue gear I have that were starting to gather dust. If you are thinking about getting rid of you analogue mixing desk and all those great pieces of redundant kit you have lying around, you too should think twice.