That sound was your modem talking to the modem on the other end of the phone line. They basically start slow and then speak faster and faster and faster and faster until the other modem is like “wait, I lost you.” And now they know how fast they can talk to each other.
Pretty sure it was only audible to humans because the handshakes took a while and people are really impatient when it seems like nothing is happening. Less an engineering constraint and more a marketing one.
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