Audacity Forum

So I've read all those thing about old radio/walkie talkie/PA effects on audacity, but I'm trying to get an effect that makes it sound like an old radio set from the 1940-1950s.

Here's a nice (and funny) example.

Any ideas? Narrow band pass filters don't cut it by themselves... I've tried that. (Please, nothing about just white noise)

The effect in the video you linked to was narrow band pass (approximately 700Hz-7000Hz) an example is attached.

If you want radio effects (there were none on the video) then try putting the search words “radio” and “noise” here

AM radio doesn't go beyond 5 KHz (although everybody wishes it would), and it goes down to 20 Hz. That's the proof of performance for a radio station. It does have some very peculiar noise. It can have a very low 10 KHz whistle in the background. That's two stations interfering with each other, and any electrical noise or static you happen to have laying around. It can have two stations at once.

They do not echo.

You need to know the metaphor. Transistor radio sound is going to be very different from the AM radio in my sound system, different from the Victorian Living Room console sound and different again from a Ghetto Blaster.

Koz

You can go well on your way to that effect with just the eq. That's how they did it, but they were spoofing the effect, not doing the real thing. Old Tyme Radio had announcers that took advantage of the response of the system by having very deep voices and slightly exaggerated pronunciation. No filter for that I've ever found.

Another spoof buried in there is the Rudy Vallee voice. He had no volume at all so sang through a small megaphone so everybody could hear him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNp5t1ns ... re=related

All that and optical Film Sound didn't go beyond 5KHz, either.

Koz

<<<"heterodyne whistle" >>>

Exactly. Radio stations in the US are 10 KHz apart. During the day, everything works out, but at night, you can hear two stations right next to each other. From my childhood, WGY in Schenectady NY and WFAA/WBAP Dallas/Ft.Worth. 810 and 820 on your AM dial and both rock crusher stations. Whistle City. Most AM radios have a circuit to get rid of that, but the earlier radios didn't have one.

AM sound fidelity is half the station spacing which gives you 5KHz sound.

If you play your cards right, you can get fading, too, as the stations drifted into each other -- particularly at night.

If you lived near the Mexican border, you had another problem. Mexico had little or no limit on transmitter power, so they had stations that would melt Fiats and Volkswagens in the parking lot.

Koz

I've had another go: 700-5000Hz and some compression (no reverb)

Yes, compression is called for, but I don't entirely agree with the 700 Hz drop. They didn't sound like telephones (300-3000). They had very good bass.

No transistor radios in 1948.

And it's also the difference between the spoof and the real thing.

The effects can be minimal if the show is "Pepper Young's Family" and the announcer is Don Pardo. It's a lot more work to carry off Electro Trance on an AM station.


Koz

Oh, and Chris's Compressor does an amazing job of simulating a radio station compression. I bump the compression from .5 to .8 when I use it.

Koz

Wow, thanks for the answers, guys.
Although I'm not quite sure how AM radio cross-over works into this topic.

So I'll try narrow bandpass filters and equalizers and see what works.

Btw, what I'm trying to do is create a narration spiel for this WWII training video.

kozikowski wrote:Yes, compression is called for, but I don't entirely agree with the 700 Hz drop. They didn't sound like telephones (300-3000). They had very good bass.

The vocal on the video orangel linked to has very little bass, (more like 1920s gramophone).

orangel wrote:Although I'm not quite sure how AM radio cross-over works into this topic.

If you want the audio to sound like it's emanating from a WWII radio, throw in a heterodyne whistle.

orangel wrote: So I'll try narrow bandpass filters and equalizers and see what works.

Audacity's equalizer alone is sufficient: this is the equalization I used ...
BTW If you are using Audacity's native compressor I suggest you reverse the track, apply the compressor, then reverse it back the right way around.
This avoids the creation of spikes at the start of words, which Audacity's own compressor unfortunately tends to add.