Voice effects to simulate techniques used in video games...

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

I run Audacity on Mac OS X 10.5.

I am looking for a way to take a voice recording as input, apply some distortion filter and save the result as MP3.

Things I would like to achieve in examples:

  • Cortana’s voice over in the Halo 3 revelation trailer
  • Soldier’s voice via a WWII radio transmitter (with all the crackles and drop-outs)
  • Darth Vader’s voice
  • Sci-Fi sounding voice effects (The Borg, etc.)

There are many Windows apps to do this, but few Mac apps.

Although, I found Audio Hijack Pro, which I have not tested yet.

On Windows, there is:

MorphVOX
AV Voice Changer

Could I use Audacity to do this? Is it too low lever for this very narrow type of project?

I did a search in these forums and I found tidbits of information, but nothing truly focused on voice effects.

2

There are virtually limitless changes that you can make to a voice using the effects in Audacity - also look in the wiki (link at top of page) for “LADSPA plug-ins” and “Nyquist plug-ins”. These extend the types of effects that are available. (the LADSPA and Nyquist effects tend to be less troublesome than VST effects).

I’m not familiar with these computer games so I can’t recommend how to reproduce those specific effects, but have a play around and discover.

3

I am not interested in reproducing a specific effect, per se, I am more interested in coming up with an effect that will work well with a video I am making.

I’ll try to mess around with it. There are so many knobs and settings, it’s daunting at first.

4

Yeh, but it’s a lot of fun isn’t it :smiley:

5

sorry to reopen such an old topic, but I have a specific related question…

Does anyone know how exactly they modulated the Borg voices (in any series) to make them sound as they do? Or a way to come close?

I’m hoping to use Audacity to create some Borg voice tracks.