[LAU] Landlines, was Re: M/S EQ in Linux

[Simon Wise]

On 15/09/13 18:15, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 09:11:04PM -1000, david wrote:
>> I understand the old phone system audio was optimized for one thing:
>> human speech. Narrow frequency range centered around the average
>> human speech range. Listening to music over that was horrible!
>>
>> My cheap cell phone plays music far better than any landline phone ever did.
>>
>
> I use a lot of four-wire landlines at work, which are considerably "flatter" than normal phone circuits.  You can order bare copper with flat response to about 10kHz which used to be used for broadcast links apparently.  The new AOD stuff is more reliable (and can be switched like telephone calls, unlike hardwired links) but is restricted to "telephone bandwidth" by the digital codecs used.
>
> They're still hellish expensive though, at roughly eight grand per year per link ;-)
>

that's about what we paid in 1980 for such a link between to radio studios only 
a few kilometres apart ... that gave a high quality, tested, stereo link that 
was always ours, not shared in any way. Other landlines always varied a lot 
depending on there age and condition, but in terms of voice calls unless you had 
some old or long connection or something they were a lot clearer and more 
reliable than cellphones are here now.

Simon