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Howdy,

I'm recording a training phone call for a client (to show proper customer service etc), and I'd like to make it sound like one of the parties is on the phone.

What can I do to simulate the phone sound?

Note: the voices have already been tracked.

Thanks a million...

Try putting it through a very heavy band-pass filter.

Center it at say, 1KHz or somewhere vaguely in that range.

If it still doesn't sound shit enough, then distort it a bit.

POTS analog phone lines are band pass limited to 200Hz-3kHz, and typically have about 10-15% THD and a S/N of no more than about 40dB and are compressed. Use a lowpass or shelving filter to remove everything above 3k and a highpass to remove everything below 200Hz. Use a compressor to squash the signal a bit and also drive it hard at the input stage to add the appropriate amount of THD and noise (the crappier the compressor the better).

Digital trunk channels for voice only applications are typically 8bit at about 6.5kHz sampling rate. If your software offers sample conversion this poor, you can apply this as well to create the phone "sound". I might use a higher sample rate...say 12k or 22k just to keep the intellegibility up.

Good luck!

geiginni is dead on with the frequency range

there was a really cool artical in tape-op about such a thing. Ive built three and is rediculesly easy. get an old rotory head set, unscrew the mouth and ear peace. when i did it the ear peice was more sensitive.
connect some two conducter wire,+ & - , like a speaker and wallah.
instant telephone effect.

zywot66 wrote:rediculesly easy

connect some two conducter wire,+ & - , like a speaker and wallah.

Zywott, was that spelling supposed to be ironic?

Either way, it brought a smile to my face, and wallah, I was happy.

Oh come on, Chris.

Don't you just love the impact when someone like Britney Spears has the telephone effect before booming into a chorus.

Christ, I love that shit.

BadComrade wrote:I realize that he's using this effect for a faked phone conversation, and that's fine.

I'd just like to say that I HATE that fucking effect in music. It is the cheesiest fucking thing you can do. EVERYONE does it. It's right up there with the windchimes you'd hear in R&B top 40 crap through the 1990's. Everything song that uses that is gonna sound soooo dated in the future.

i'm very glad we have an answering machine message on an album my then-band recorded in '97. it's the owner of the store downstairs, below the studio, politely telling us, in her broken english,

"uhh, hello guys, i know you're upstairs, but the music is very loud. customer are complaining, annnnnd, i really start to be headache. please put the music down, thank you!" and the thank you is all sing-songy and sweet and everything. it's cute. we put it right before our most brash song. i'm glad we did. in 30 years, if i still have a copy of it, i'll laugh and say "my my, remember *answering machines*?!?!?"

we laid an SM58 flat on top of the answering machine, just set it there. the capsule was above the speaker, roughly, but it was pointed 90 degrees off-axis, for even less high-end response than we might've gotten. it sounded pretty crappy. we already got the phone quality to it by the fact that the speaker was talking into a phone.

you could always run your recorded signal through a speaker like a little 1" button piece of crap or a 2" tweeter from a 70's radio or something like that, and record it with the crummiest mic you can find. that'll muck it up, it might sound alright.

or if you have access to a phone with speakerphone, use that phone to call another phone that has an actual oldschool answering machine attached to it. play the recording you have loud enough so the speakerphone can pick it up, and then call your answering machine and leave it as a message. then mic the answering machine. legit!

you guys are really clever

Yes, you guys are all clever 'n stuff. Many thanks!

I will try out the suggestions this evening when my day job ends.

Wallah!