That "Telephone" Sound

[Hank The Curmudgeon]

My neighbor's son approached me with an amusing dilemma. His class is
filming a mock 1930's B+W detective film. There are several scenes
where the star is seen making phone calls with the opposite persons
voice dubbed in. In an effort to replicate that "telephone" sound I
tried a suction cup pickup coil from R/S intended for recording calls.
The one cordless phone wouldn't give any signal at all and the other
phone sounded so "clean" in the recording it was just not period
believable. Any ideas about doing this quick, dirty and cheap? OJ
cans, taught string and a piezo disc?

[Chris Muir]

What about just filtering the voice? High pass at about 200 Hz, low pass at about 2KHz. Maybe add some low level noise?

– C

Chris Muir "Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you."
c...@well.com - Steven Colbert

[John Brian Kirby]

Yep, this is the way. Or just sweep a bandpass filter around the 2KHz
range until you get something that sounds right (which is pretty much
equivalent to the HP + LP that Chris suggested).

If you don't have a software package with filtering, you can use EQ to
do pretty much the same thing- try Audacity.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

JB

On 3/20/11 12:44 PM, Chris Muir wrote:
> What about just filtering the voice? High pass at about 200 Hz, low pass at about 2KHz. Maybe add some low level noise?
>

> � C

[spacewulf]

I've also found that applying a small amount of distortion post filtering also helps. If you have the software, you can even run the signal through a convolution reverb with a very short phone speaker impulse response.
I'm on the road so I can't search for that ATM, but I believe there are at least IR files that are free, if not a conv. Reverb as well

-j

--------------
sent from a roving future-generating device

On Mar 20, 2011, at 12:57, John Brian Kirby <j...@afternight.org> wrote:

> Yep, this is the way. Or just sweep a bandpass filter around the 2KHz range until you get something that sounds right (which is pretty much equivalent to the HP + LP that Chris suggested).
>
> If you don't have a software package with filtering, you can use EQ to do pretty much the same thing- try Audacity.
>
> http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
>
> JB
>
> On 3/20/11 12:44 PM, Chris Muir wrote:
>> What about just filtering the voice? High pass at about 200 Hz, low pass at about 2KHz. Maybe add some low level noise?
>>

>> – C

[Hank The Curmudgeon]

Well the solution came from a surprising source...our local community
theater. The young man in question was talking to them about props and
mentioned the telephone sound fx dilemma he had. They have a complete
rig they're loaning him with a 1940's desk phone and a 1940's
operators headset hard wired to communicate with each other. He said
the theater demo'ed it for him and the sound is perfect. The "network"
is tapped so either end's output audio can be fed into the house
pa...or, in this case, the video's soundtrack! How's that for a
purpose built solution to an off the wall problem found where you'd
least expect to find it! As always thanks for everyone's assistance!