Phone conversations

Brent · Post by **Brent** » Thu May 22, 2003 1:00 am

Anyone have a good way of creating phone conversations? I cant get very good results actually recording the phone, is there some sort of filter / equilizer set up that would work?

Post by **Matt** » Thu May 22, 2003 1:06 am

Get hold of a decent sound editing program like Goldwave. Record your sound as a normal wave file using a microphone or whatever. Resample it at a low sample rate to simulate the bandwidth of a phone (ie 3khz ish). Add a noise filter if available. That may give you a phone effect. Its all about throwing away just enough quality for that authentic telephone style !

Chris · Post by **Chris** » Thu May 22, 2003 5:22 am

You can resample, but there's a way that I think works better. If you do have an audio editing program, EQ the sound and dump everything above 3.5 khz and everything below 400 hz. The reason I prefer this method is that then your wave is left with the higher quality sampling rate and people can understand the words better. I guarantee that the radical EQ makes it precisely phonelike.

If you don't have an editing program at all, you can use a regular mixer - as long as it has a basic EQ section. Dump all the lows, dump about half the highs, and boost the midrange. If the midrange is parametric (sweepable) set it to about 3khz and go to town. This won't work quite as well as a brickwall filter in an editing program, but it'll do all right.

Grant · Post by **Grant** » Thu May 22, 2003 6:23 am

You can buy from electronic stores a little suction cupped microphone to connect to the phone which tapes the conversation

MarkA87 · Post by **MarkA87** » Thu May 22, 2003 12:24 pm

Yea u can just put the audio into a wave editor - and turn down the low frequencies and turn up the high ones.

Towels42 · Post by **Towels42** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 8:45 pm

If you want to record and edit sound, download Audacity... It's free! Its great for editing and modifying mp3s for movies.

Here's the link... it's a must-have for anyone recording sound.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

BrownCowStudios · Post by **BrownCowStudios** » Mon Jul 21, 2003 9:39 pm

Ehh... yeah, I tried Audacity a while ago, but I still think Goldwave is better...

Grant · Post by **Grant** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 12:04 am

Sick Individual Productions reccomend and use whole heartedly Cakewalk and Soundforge

Spike · Post by **Spike** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:22 pm

check out "Cool Edit" you can do a lot of cool stuff with your voice including th phone effect

El Brenty · Post by **El Brenty** » Tue Jul 22, 2003 8:07 pm

I've got a Creative SoundBlaster Live that cost me a small fortune when it first came out, but prices have dropped now, and they have all the sockets on a front panel now!

It came bundles with a load of freebies, including an Environmental Audio thingy that lets you change the sound of sounds in realtime! You can sound like a chipmunk (Good for kick in the nuts shots! "Ow man, that wasn't necessary!" LOL!), Godlike for demon-posessed cats and hampsters, and you can play around with it for a telephone sound.

I know exactly the type of sound you mean - Remember the opening part of Einstein-a-go-go by Landscape before the music starts??? (Oh God, I'm showing my age again!)

Grant · Post by **Grant** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 12:36 am

LuteLeigh if Sick Individual Productions also whole heartedly uses and recommends the soundblaster Audigy