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SFX Question: Taxi and police Radio sounds


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Hey folks:

 

I got a gig doing sound design for a theatre company and the play we're doing has a PA not properly wired getting bleed from a taxi dispatcher and a couple of police cars radioing in. Any suggestions or plugins for getting the radio treatment for voices, and also the sounds of the radio beeping in and squawking?

 

Kindof a cool problem don't you think?

 

Spencer

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If by 'cool', you mean 'pain in the ass to track down every cable and connection in the house to find the open connection that's letting all the noise in or maybe worse having to replace some of the cabling because it's inferior quality to begin with and has poor shielding'...well, sure.

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For an otherworldly sound, try running the captured taxi and police sounds through a slap delay, a bit of reverb, and then flange the reverb (or send it through a wah-pedal that you are manipulating). Great fun. You'll have the voices on 100% of the time, and your audience will love it! Wheeeee!!! :D

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i think he's identified a sound he thinks is neat, and is looking to reproduce that sound in an entirely different situation at another point in time. am i wrong?

 

try dumping the bit rate a litttle, and find a poor quality sample rate converter, one that wont anti-alias. this will give you a cb-style sound. high/low shelfs help too.

 

then for the static, either manually or strategically sidechain-gate distorted pink-noise to follow the voices. for squeaks and such, may have to be added manually.

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If that's what he means....well, the other scenario was just way too much fun not to address!! :D

 

You could try spiking the EQ so that it is really midrangey, and then as Coaster said, use high/low pass filters. That'll get you pretty close. And yes, if you can dump the bit rate, that might grain it up a bit.

 

Or you can have someone call in and leave a message with what you want said on your answering machine and then mic that.

 

And for static, you can take some from a CD radio or from another radio that is not on the station correctly and mix that in.

 

I don't know how you do the squawking and stuff like that, though. Never tried that.

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Phil,

 

Right, the obvious thing, why didn't I think of that! I can use my son's cheapo toy walky talkies. See, the PA is really just part of the script folks, it's a gag. I don' t have to worry about a faulty PA.

 

Doesn't that Russian Kosmonaut plugin do the beeps and static too? I can't remember.

 

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I'll try a lower bit rate too.

 

Spencer

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Phil's got the right idea! If you have too many files to do it the walkie-talkie way, or just want to try some plug-ins, try these ideas. I've had good results using these practices.

 

Radio effect #1: I run a plug-in chain using four plugs; Amp sim, EQ, Compressor, Maximizer. For the amp sim I run an American Lead model with just a slight 'drive' to it and boost the presense a bit. I usually tweak the 'telephone' preset for the EQ and use the 'voice-over' preset for the comp. I then smash it with an L1. Downsampling helps, but it depends on how legible you want the final VO.

 

Radio effect #2: I've gotten some really cool results from using the Sony Resonant Filter plug-in. I'll start with the 'muffled' or 'Teenage Late-Night Radio by the bed' preset and change the frequency and resonance to get the right effect. I'll then EQ or compress, depending on what type of effect I want. I usually end with an L1.

 

For the squelches you can take a little white noise and edit that to sound like an end transmission. Maybe add a beep type of sound too to that. You might get the best effect for that by recording your walkie-talkies.

 

Sounds like fun to me. I can process some files for you if you need certain plug-ins! Just shoot me an email.

 

Chris

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