Changing music on hold on a sark pbx (including sark200)

If you want to change the music-on-hold that comes as standard on a SARK PBX, the main stumbling block is getting the audio file(s) in the correct format.

There are several you can use, the best is a wave file with the following format audio:

RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bit, mono 8000 Hz

This should work on any SARK PBX, including the SARK200.

It is also possible to use MP3 but you may need to also install MP3 decoding software and it will put a small amount of extra load on to the system.

A number of free tools can be used to convert your audio files into this format such as “sox” or “audacity”.

The simplest way of replacing the existing MoH on SARK is to connect to it using ssh/scp (or WinSCP if using Windows) and go into the folder:

/usr/share/asterisk/moh

Then delete or move any audio files in there and copy your new file(s) in to there.

Note – if you have an older sark system then the location will be /var/lib/asterisk/moh

Then reload Asterisk by clicking on the “commit” button in the web interface or using the command “moh reload” at the Asterisk CLI.

One last thing, you cannot use copyrighted music unless you have a PRS license. So make sure you are using music with no copyright (there are a couple of online libraries for this) or music you’ve had professionally produced.