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Radio Voice-over Sounds

Daniel Petras

Daniel Petras

Active Member
Does anyone know how they get these sounds into games or movies? Is it perhaps a certain impulse response, filter or distortion? Maybe they just use output from actual radios..

I'm talking about something like at 1:43

Click to read more...
 
If you don't have modeling software like Speakerphone, most vocal effects like that (telephone, two-way radio) can be convincingly replicated using EQ, limiting, and distortion.
 
Specifically: the sort of distortion created by crude bit depth reduction is great for this sound. Also a great technique, that many people miss, is to put a click at the start and end of any audio file before processing. It sounds fantastic once you've processed the audio and adds a strong sense of realism - as if someone has pressed a comms button of some sort - even chopping off the start of the first and/or end of the last word - especially in the more dramatic moments where the words are less important than the feeling! People are generally rubbish at pushing buttons when they speak, ask any sound engineer. This doesn't work if the engine is processing in real time & the clip is also to be heard in a non-radio comms situation, obviously.

If you're thinking of recording voice for a game like this (you mention Wwise) then I can tell you that all the processing in the world is no good if you don't capture convincing voice files. It's incredibly hard to do, particularly with the generally terrible quality of voice script that these games typically produce.
 
Use a highpass and lowpass filter. Start at around 100hz with the highpass and 2000hz with the low pass. Adjust them to taste. The smaller the bandwidth the more lofi it will sound. Then add some saturation afterwards and if you want try adding a bitcrusher for a digital feel.
 
In addition to much of what has been suggested above, another thing I've done to emulate a really bad radio connection is to add a mild low frequency pitch oscillation to the audio signal, at (should be no surprise here) 60hz. I tried this after noticing a similar type of hum+garbled quality in actual low quality radio recordings, and I found the technique to be pretty effective (although it is easy to go too far and make the voice virtually unintelligible ... subtlety is key).
 
WindcryMusic said:
In addition to much of what has been suggested above, another thing I've done to emulate a really bad radio connection is to add a mild low frequency pitch oscillation to the audio signal, at (should be no surprise here) 60hz. I tried this after noticing a similar type of hum+garbled quality in actual low quality radio recordings, and I found the technique to be pretty effective (although it is easy to go too far and make the voice virtually unintelligible ... subtlety is key).
Click to expand...


To clarify, are you modulating the pitch or the amplitude slightly at 60hz?
 
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