Make Audio Sound like Phone Call

J

joelaready

Active member
Greetings all,
I'm trying to manipulate some sound clips to make them sound like one of the "via-phone" interviews you hear on the news. Does anyone know how this could be done, other than by micing an actual phone? Is there a filter or something that makes it sound distorted and hollow?
Thanks,
Joel
 
this is pretty easy actually what editor as you using?

on the audio filters there should be one that says 3 band EQ its the one that controls your lows mids and highs
lower the low all the way down and the mids too and elevate the highs, play around with it
 
aalleexx said:
this is pretty easy actually what editor as you using?

on the audio filters there should be one that says 3 band EQ its the one that controls your lows mids and highs
lower the low all the way down and the mids too and elevate the highs, play around with it
Click to expand...

This is not well stated...

The boosted area should be in the (slightly) upper midrange, around 1-2KHz, not the highs, which should be rolled off, along with the lows as you indicated. If the equalizer uses a graphic line to indicate boost or cut, a large "hill" at about 1.5KHz should be surrounded by steep "cliffs" below and above that. It should look like the front half of a surfboard sticking up vertically just to the right of the middle of the spectrum.

It often is necessary to use several bands of a multi-band EQ to get that much cut around the boost. Waves Q10 is what I use for it. It's a 10-band "para-graphic". I might use 5-7 bands at once, all but one of them attenuating. There are many others that will do the job well, and you could always just use multiple instances of a less powerful EQ if that's all you have access to.

I'ts usually best to use some pretty heavy compression after the EQ because the extreme boost causes certain voice frequencies to get very uneven dynamically.

It's a very commonly used effect, and one that almost any well-experienced recording engineer can do. I'm sure I've done it hundreds of times.
 
ok ted mr. tech jaja j/k man
I just wanned to post what has worked for me in the past, its just a matter of playing with it till it sounds right, but you seem to be on a whole different level which is awsome :)
 
Telephone bandwidth is between 220 Hz and 3 kHz or so. Use sharp low and high pass filters on your EQ to completely remove all frequencies outside of that range. Add some sibilance, some breathing into the mic, and maybe some handling noise, all with the same filters and you're done.
 
Missed this one...

Speakerphone from Audio Ease is great for this kind of thing. A bit pricey if your not in the sound post biz but very nice.
 
MattinSTL said:
The best way to make your dialog sound like a phone call is to use an me66.
Click to expand...

Funny you say that. I had a guy I worked with(He was a DP) and he was using that microphone and I told him how I hated it because it makes everything sound so darn thin. I compared the same sound recording to my Rode NTG-3 and now he understood why I said that mic is VERY THIN. I mean it will work but I don't like the sound of it.

Nicole
 
I once rigged up a 1/8" plug that connects a cellphone (with 1/8" headset out) to my mixer, then I recorded the actual call on set through the cell on channel 1 and boom mic on channel 2. Was really easy and worked well, so long as the phone they're talking into is real.

To get the effect in post, I would call myself and leave a message playing back the dialog I needed to sound "phoney", (ha couldn't help that one! :)) on a speaker, and then record the playback of voicemail using the speakerphone and a boom mic.

That's the free method if you don't have the plugins, which would probably be a little faster...:)
 
MattinSTL said:
The best way to make your dialog sound like a phone call is to use an me66.
Click to expand...

Ok we get it... you don't like the ME66. Your shtick is getting old quite honestly.

Some of us have used this mic quite successfully and it doesn't even remotely sound as bad as you've described. It was an industry workhorse for years. Yes we know there are better mics available. So posting stuff like this really does a disservice to new people trying to learn and make informed decisions. Further more you know darn well that you are just taking shots at people who use ME66's. What's that all about? I just sold a project to the 2nd largest broadcast TV station in the Ukraine, and the audio was done with a ME66 and finished with Sound Forge. They thought it sounded great. "Ambelton Delight" just won best indie film of the year in the UK and it was all done with a ME66 and sounds great as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top