Music Thru Phones

[bboyd]

I know this is probably a long gone feature but on our old Nortel system we had the option to listen to music thru the phone and when the phone would ring the music would go off, ring, answer etc. then when you hung up the music would begin playing again. Since we are now on the 3cx system I haven't been able to find a workaround or any other type of feature. I was Streaming Pandora and had the computer plugged into the phone system on the Nortel system but didn't know if anyone knew of a feature like this on the 3cx.

 

[markshehan]

You might want to look at the new (coming out this month) Grandstream GXP2200. It is an android based phone so all your android apps (such as Pandora) will work on it.

Price tag is a bit steep ($240 ish) but this will start to come down in time.

I played with one earlier this week and like what I see.

 

[craigreilly]

I asked about this during the summer.

Maybe a multicast option that 3cx could multicast the hold music. But the phone vendors would have to update their firmware too.

 

[flurk]

I am using 3CX trial version, and I have a working setup:
for the baby's lullaby music, I set up two IVR's to play that music.
1 lullaby music is 10 minutes. Another one is a 1 hour instrumental piece. 3CX plays this without problem!
You can play music on line 1, and receive incoming calls on line 2...

I tried another IVR-program: TekIVR (http://www.tekivr.com), but the soundquality of the latter is quite deceiving (it's always choppy).

I have a similar application where i automatically download my preferred podcasts and drop them in an IVR. Downside of this: you always have to start listening over from the beginning. No possibility to fast-forward through the soundfile.
A workaround to this problem would be to make multiple IVR's (max. up to 10), each containing the same soundfile, but each with a few more minutes chopped off at the beginning of the file. IVR1 contains the complete soundfile, IVR2 contains (soundfile - n min.), IVR 3 contains (soundfile - 2*n min.), IVR4 contains (soundfile - 3*n min)... up to IVR10 which contains the last n mins of the file. Within 1 IVR you can assign shortkeys to 10 other IVR's, which would allow you to jump forward and back within the soundfile.

Streaming does not seem to be a possible option in 3CX.

Update (25/11/12): I just finished experimenting with the freeware PJSUA.exe for Windows for playing music over the phone. It gives a marvellous result. The Sound quality is even a bit smoother than 3CX (less interuptions; even when served from a VM running on top of the 3CX-server) and the thing plays instantly (for aesthetics i have to add a few seconds of silence at the start and the tail of my music file with a sound editor).
Downside: once the player gets triggered by an incoming call, it does two things:
- Anyone who calls in later, has to hop on the music stream at a random place. The music stream does not start from zero for the new callers. In other words: all the callers hear exactly the same at the same time.
- If everybody hangs up, the player does not rewind to the beginning. Upon the next incoming call, It continues playing there where it stopped previously.

Cheers,
Flurk

 

[sigma1]

Try the Grandstream GXV3140, that will do it for you and can be had for cheap.

 

[bboyd]

Thanks everyone. To be honest I forgot about this thread but it was a nice gift to come back to once I remembered!

I think the GXV3140 is the way to go. I don't have a problem paying that much for a phone for me. Now the other minions in the office is another story.

When it is talking about streaming music is is just Pandora that anyone knows of or any music streaming?

 

[SY]

Disclaimer: It is just a sample of trick, how to implement "something like this", it is not a feature which is supported by 3CX Phone System.

Prerequisites:
1. 3cx v11
2. Audio stream configured on "Music on hold provider" ("playlist" and "LineIn" options are available)
3. Paging group configured as "multicast"
4. Snom phones which are listening to the group (3.)
5. IVR which is configured to use a prompt provided by (2.)

Procedure:
make a call from any extension to (5.) and transfer it (the call) [blind transfer] to (3.)
All (4.) will start to work as you expected. (listen for "the music provided by (2.)" and will behave exact as you specified)

Regards

 

[moon1234]

This is a feature that asked about almost 4 years ago. Almost all TDM PBXs support this type of feature. We STILL have a central NEC NEAX 1400 IMS being used that is 22 years old. We had a big problem with hundreds of people streaming their favorite radio station all day. It consumes a TON of bandwidth. We wound up having to block all streaming radio sites at the corporate firewall.

The solution was to add 6 streams of different types of music to the PBX. The NEC has analog audio cards that are inserted into the main chassis. Each card has two 1/8" audio jacks. Each jack is addressable as either music on hold or background music. The streams come from winamp and windows media player on a computer with multiple sound cards. Each "station" is setup as a Windows Service using SRVANY.EXE to launch Winamp or Windows Media player with a playlist.

Users select their "station" by dialing a feature code on their phone, in our case 66, followed by 1-6 that selects the "channel". When they are not on a call, etc. the audio is played through the speakerphone speaker on the phone. It is very popular and we sometimes change the "channels" to add variety.

The same setup could easily be done with Polycom or other phones that support paging, if 3CX team would choose to develop it. The idea is to reduce internet bandwidth use by each person listening to their own stream. 32-64kbps streams multiplied by hundreds of people turns into serious bandwidth that cuts into business productivity.