Home Using an external sound source (i.e. Muzak) for MOH via the sound card in your Asterisk server. By John Johnson 7/20/2012 First connect the output from your sound source to the input/mic port on your soundcard (input is probably blue, the pink one is usually the microphone jack) then: 1.  Add the following to /etc/asterisk/musiconhold.conf [default] mode=custom directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3 application=/var/lib/playlinein You will probably also need to comment out (add ; at the line beginning) the “includes” for the additional conf files like this: ;#include musiconhold_custom.conf ;#include musiconhold_additional.conf You will end up with only the “external sound source” as the default MOH by doing this, but it makes it simpler. 2. Create the file:  /var/lib/playlineinand place the following two lines in the file: #!/bin/bash /usr/bin/arecord -q -c 1 -r 8000 --buffer-size=2048 -f S16_LE 3. Type the following in a linux command line prompt to set ownership: cd /var/lib chown asterisk:asterisk ece-playlinein chmod 777 playlinein 4. Type the following in a linux command line prompt: groupadd -g 525 audio usermod -G audio root usermod -G audio asterisk 5. Add the following lines to the bottom of /etc/rc.d/rc.local: chown asterisk /dev/tty9 chown -R root:audio /dev/snd chmod -R a+rwX /dev/snd 6. Copy an mp3 file into /var/lib/mohmp3 so there is at least one file there, it won’t play but in some circumstances is required, it’s just as easy to put it there anyway. ~now reboot the system~ 7. Upon system startup, from a linux command line prompt enter: alsamixer This is the sound mixer control system, you can access “all” settings by pressing F5. Only some settings are required to be enabled, (the “mute” function is toggled by moving to the setting and pressing “m”). Which settings are required varies from one main board/sound card to another, (our XR1000 required us to un-mute/enable “capture” and “digital” with “input” set to “mic”) This requires some “fiddling around” to get the sound right, so be prepared to play with it for a while. It seemed easiest to connect a couple of phones and put ourselves on hold and adjust things till it sounded right. Remember that in this system the sound is being converted to a “file” of 2048 bytes so when you make a change in alsamixer the sound will play for a few seconds (maybe 30) until the change shows up, be patient, make changes in small increments. 8. You can also connect speakers (they have to be amplified/powered) to the output (probably green) and they will probably play also giving you a sound comparison from your input to what you are hearing on the phone sets. Incidentally, if you add the “line in” MOH functionality it will kill the “sound card output paging” I have described in an earlier post. The two features cannot coincide, so to use external paging with this line in MOH feature will require an external paging module. The following are some of the references I used to work the above out: http://www.elastix.org/index.php/en/component/kunena/26-tips-and-tricks/32378-music-on-hold-via-line-in-on-the-sound-card.html http://www.sthomas.net/2007/12/using-a-sound-card-as-a-music-on-hold-source-in-asterisk/ http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+config+musiconhold.conf Home