Modern Chinese has four tones, so how many tones did ancient Chinese have before the fall of the Qing Dynasty? Is the sound quality and tone of ancient Chinese better than modern Mandarin?

Before the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the tones of ancient Chinese were divided into two periods:

Before the Yuan Dynasty, there were four tones: Ping, Shang, Dei, and Jin;

After the Yuan Dynasty, there were three tones: Ping (the ancient Ping tone, which has been divided into two tones: Yinping and Yangping today), Shang, and Dei.

"Sound quality" refers to the quality of sound, the quality of sound refers to the fidelity of the audio signal after transmission and processing. The quality of sound, mainly depends on the pitch, tone, timbre three aspects of whether to achieve a certain level. And timbre is audio overtones or harmonic components. These are mostly people's subjective feelings, it should be said that there is no absolute objective standards, and therefore, there is no way to talk about whether the ancients speak better than today's people speak with a bad comparison. Just as you like to listen to the Qinqiang roar, I like to listen to the Wu Nong soft language.

For your reference, I hope to adopt.