Hi guys, I need your help. I have a voice sample and I need it to sound a lot like Half-Life Vox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGjsBKcDZAw) or HEV Suit Vox . What combination of filters should I use to achieve this kind of effects?
You mean the low pitched voice? (I’m not a half-life fan:) )
- Record and edit the words - aim to get the right kind of intonation and spacing between words - you are aiming for something that sounds disjointed.
- Compress the dynamics severely (fast lookahead limiter plug-in or similar)
- Pitch shift to lower the pitch (unless you have a naturally deep voice)
- Duplicate the track
- Amplitude modulate one of the tracks (“Ring Modulator LFO” effect set to “AM”, Sine, 50 Hz)
- Mix in a bit of the duplicate track to reduce the wobbliness a bit.
- Delay (or echo) plug-in effect - about 50 milliseconds with a touch of feedback
- A bit of reverb (G-verb or Freeverb plug-ins)
- Compress/limit again
Note, you may also need to use the noise removal effect as these processes will amplify any noise in the recording a lot.
That should give you something pretty similar.
[Edit] Attached is a short sample that I knocked up - if you spend a bit more time tweaking the effects you should be able to improve on this - I only spent a couple of minutes. Note also that step 1 (above) is probably the most important part, but I didn’t really bother with that.
robot.zip (52.3 KB)
Can you please share the presets you had used to generate the above sample? I appreciate your step-by-step instructions to get the desired result, however I am not an expert audio engineer, so I am failing to reproduce the same effect based on these suggestions.
If you spare your time to at least explain the details on how to accomplish each step by giving the exact name of the plugins and the settings, I would very appreciate.
For example, I have installed fast lookahead limiter plugin, but I am not sure what a severe compression means, which settings should I apply. I tried with different pitch levels of my own voices, but no luck.
Thanks in advance.
That was two years ago.
If I were doing it again now, I’d probably use Audacity’s Limiter. I might also try throwing a bit of “Distortion” effect into the mix.
Thank you for taking your time to response. Which settings would you suggest for these effects? I already tried them, but the result is not even close to yours. What about the ring modulator? Should I use it too? Can you please list down all the necessary steps as you did above, but with the parameters these time? For a non-expert audio person, like me, it is struggling to figure out them.
I don’t know the exact settings to use. I just fiddled around with those effects to try and get close to original example. The best settings will depend on what your voice is like naturally.