Dial Tone

I will never be silenced!

I’ve been meaning to ask, has anyone ever told you your F is a tad sharp for equal temperament? I’m not suggesting you change. I think your clean beat frequency makes you pretty cool just the way you are.
- I first read it
  has anyone ever told you F
  And thought it was going to be a joke continuing OP's thought 🫡
Did you... join during the Rexodus and wait all this time just for this joke? 🤣 (if there is a more mundane explanation, I don't want to know - I prefer this one:-)
- I'm so angry today, that I didn't even catch the joke. It wasn't until I was making my own reply of confusion that I needed to copy the username of who said that, that I realized their name was /u/dialtone
  Then I got their joke. I still don't know what a Rexodus is though.

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.

That’s just sparkling doot
- Man, reading this sentence felt like a little electric jolt to the brain as it pieced the memes together.
- If it’s not grown in the POTS region of Bell then it’s not dialtone, it’s just sparkling doot .
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.

Last time I heard a dial tone was just a second ago when I pushed the speakerphone button on my Cisco ip phone.

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.
- It's only a dial tone if it comes from a land line
  otherwise it's just sparkling audio lies
- 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.
Ceci n'est pas une tonalité
Was coming to type this.
- You have an odd fetish

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?
- yes
- 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....
- I don't understand the need for these. I can't read text faster than 300 baud anyway.
- 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 :(
- 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 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.

I listen to it every day at work when connecting to customers alarm systems.

Necromancer

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...

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 captain crunch whistle so I hear it anytime I want to!

BZZZZT
- That is a VERY powerful vibrator you have there. Not a bumblebee, is it?
You were one of those people.
It is still wild to me that a cheap toy was able to "hack" the phone systems back then.

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.

I heard one about a week ago

I heard it last night in a movie. From an actual phone, it's been a few years, but less than 10. EDIT: actually, less than 3 years as I had to fax paperwork to get my internet. Japan!

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. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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.

Sadly, I had to fax documents recently.

Same for the R2D2-56k gatekeeper of the internet; master of the slow reveal.

My work uses VoIP and when I call anyone I hear a dial tone.

My office phone has a dial tone. It's VOIP but when you pick up the receiver it BOOOOOOOPs... So I think it was last week I heard one...

Hopefully not for the last time...

Sometimes I pick up the phone behind my desk and just listen to the dial tone. Having a voip line from my fiber internet provider is cheap. Sometimes I’ll use it to connect my old computers to the line and dial into the few remaining bbs.

I hate you.