Musical term for the "telephone voice"?

[batmura]

Hey what is the musical term for the "telephone voice" heard on albums like BWP and Damnation, mostly because of the Steven Wilson production.

Cheers!

 

[Maggai]

You an achieve such a sound by having both a high and low pass filter going in the eq. That doesn't answer the question I guess.

 

[Light]

Most times I've seen it as a preset it's been listed as, "lo-fi", or, indeed, "telephone". You just need to whack the upper-mid EQ up and cut the others though.

 

[Cyrosis]

Something I'll probably get around to eventually is recording an actual impulse response of a phone for a convolution plugin. Send a sine sweep through a phone, with the receiving phone setup in front of a microphone, couldn't really get much more accurate then that.

 

[liquidcow]

Hey what is the musical term for the "telephone voice" heard on albums like BWP and Damnation, mostly because of the Steven Wilson production.

Cheers!

I don't think there's an official name for it, but if you asked any sound guy for a telephone voice they'd know what you meant and how to do it. Most EQ plug-ins probably have a preset called something like 'telephone' or whatever. But yeh it's basically just a case of a fairly heavy high-pass filter (filters out lower frequencies and lets the high ones pass, hence the name) and a low-pass filter to take off the high end, tweaked to your desired effect.

It would be interesting to do what Cyrosis said, although when you're doing it for music, it's less about getting it to sound realistically like a telephone than getting something that sounds effective and sits well in the mix.

 

[nadavnaz]

Something I'll probably get around to eventually is recording an actual impulse response of a phone for a convolution plugin. Send a sine sweep through a phone, with the receiving phone setup in front of a microphone, couldn't really get much more accurate then that.

Accurate wouldn't necessarily sound best (to most ears).

The phone voice is slightly exaggerated I think compared to your average modern phone...

But it would be a nice experiment

 

[Cyrosis]

Accurate wouldn't necessarily sound best (to most ears).

Sure, but since when was a phone voice supposed to sound good?

 

[Metalstrm]

Simple. Equalisation.

 

[jrsh92]

That would be a band-pass filter, I believe.

 

[TehLeperAffinity]

I think you can do it with either an equalizer or bandpass filter.

 

[Light]

A band-pass filter is just high+low EQ combined, to let only one frequency band (ie. upper mid in this case) through.

Most authentic way you're going to get it is to hook your phone through your desk and then ring yourself up...

 

[Cerberus III]

Operator?

 

[Tash]

I fell in love with a 1K filter once.

 

[FuneralPortrait]

There's already a convolution plugin (Speakerphone- Altiverb) that contains a whole bunch of impulse responses for various applications. There's some pretty cool stuff in there.

 

[Cyrosis]

There's already a convolution plugin (Speakerphone- Altiverb) that contains a whole bunch of impulse responses for various applications. There's some pretty cool stuff in there.

Yeah, I've looked it over once or twice, but nearly 500$ always seemed way over the top. I do think their convolution reverb is quite nice, paying for world class acoustics somehow seems more worth the money. However, I have always preferred Gigapulse VST anyway.

 

[Ermz]

Band-pass filter, equalization & light distortion.

 

[Light]

Tin can and string.

 

[ToMnEt]

Operator?

lol