18 replies to this topic

[mystman12]

First, I know this isn't very related to Future Pinball, but I really didn't see a better place to put it, and I'm asking this so I can use it on my FP game. Anyways, my question is, does anyone know how I can make my voice sound somewhat distorted, like they do in some of the early 90's games, like Twilight Zone and White Water? I use Audacity, but I just can't figure out how to make it sound right. Any suggestions?

[faralos]

well with wavepad there is an option to speed up or slow down the sampled sound

  pitch can be altered too... I am sure Audacity would have the same option somewhere

[mystman12]

No, what I mean is, to make the voice sound kind of, staticy? I don't want it to sound crystal clear. For example, hear is a voice from Monster Bash: http://hem.bredband....ountdracula.wav

 

See how it's super high quality? My voices that I am recording don't sound that good, but still pretty good. Now listen to this voice from Twilight Zone: http://hem.bredband....er2/BIGRISK.WAV

 

See how it's not very high quality? That's what I want my voices to sound like. (Joe's Ultimate Bus Ride is meant to be like a game from the early 90's) The thing is, I can't just lower the playback rate. That just makes it sound, blurry, I guess, but it doesn't sound like I want it to.

[Shooby Doo]

You probably just need to lower the sample rate when you export/save the wav. I'm not sure what the sample rate in the roms are, but I'm sure it's really low.

[DJRobX]

The distortion mostly comes from compression.  The games used a CVSD speech codec. 

 

The most accurate simulation would be to get a CVSD encoder/decoder and save it in that format, but you might also try existing speech encoders (SPEEX, etc), they might be close enough. 

Edited by DJRobX, 18 January 2014 - 06:27 PM.

[mystman12]

How can I get either of those?

[DJRobX]

Audacity and other sound editors usually support a whole bunch of output formats.     Look through the list and see which speech formats it supports.

 

There's a command line program called Sox that appears to support CVSD.   You could try using this utility to convert your WAV to a low bitrate CVSD then convert it back to a WAV.

 

http://sox.sourceforge.net/

[mystman12]

I downloaded SoX, but I have absolutely no idea how to use it. When I open it up it just instantly closes, and I can't find any files I can edit to change what it does or anything.

[mystman12]

Okay, I asked for help on the Audacity forums, and they came up with a Nyquist Prompt code that works pretty well, so I'll probably use that.

[striggell]

Don't think it does but does Audacity support VST/AU/RTAS plugins?

 

I could easily do this through a fair few different methods in Logic Pro but haven't used Audacity for about 5 years.

[EalaDubhSidhe]

You could also play with frequency filtration - the original samples were recorded at a low baud rate so there's a limit to how high the pitch frequencies could go.

[kiwi]

Audacity supports LADSPA, Nyquist, Vamp and VST effects, unfortunately, only one effect at a time.
When I listened to the sample BigRisk the first effect that came to my mind is TAL BitCrusher, with this plugin you should get a very similar result.
As Eala says, the high frequencies are cut around 5500 Hz.

 

Max

[striggell]

I'd also recommend a bit crusher

[graphixv]

OLD Post: FYI Use BitCrusher2 VST plugin for Audicity/Cooledit/etc to reduce sounds down.

Google BitCrusher2

Edited by graphixv, 30 August 2014 - 02:16 AM.

[lodger]

*recognizing this is an older post*- it depends on what sounds from the game you mean. If  you want it to sound like it was from the early 90's, a person needs to use a bit crusher and reduce the highs and lows in the sound a bit (reducing the highs simulates a lower fidelity samplerate).

[mystman12]

Woah, bumped! Yeah, I'm using a bit crusher as well as a few other effects in Audacity. It sounds good, but something about the way I manage to make it sound just doesn't sound quite right to me. I'm probably just being too picky though. After all, this machine isn't supposed to be using the same sound systems as other games, so it shouldn't sound exactly the same.

[Nealtron]

Well, the voices in pinball ROMs sound (to me kinda) like old advertisements or AM radio. Nothing but mids. If I were to try recreating the effect, I would dump all the high and low frequencies until it sounded totally mid-range'y. Then I would crank up the gain until it just barely starts to audibly distort, then heavily compress the file, (from, say 1411 to 128 or 256). That should give you a nice "walky-talky" type of sound I would think.

 

Or... you could just use an actual walky-talky like Rob Zombie did in the song "Real Solution #9" off the Astro-Creep 2000 album!

 

Never tried this before, but I do write and record music. Theoretically, this makes sense to me.

[Nealtron]

Hah! I just realized how old this post is!

Probably missed the window for offering suggestions.

[mystman12]

I'm bringing this back from the dead to say that I've pretty much figured this out. I actually stumbled upon this thread today while researching this and decided to try SoX again. Now that I actually understand how command prompts work I was able to figure out how to use it.

 

First command was "sox tz_test.wav -r 8 -b 1 tz_test.cvs" ("tz_test.wav" being the input file and "tz_test.cvs" being the output file).

 

This took a .wav I recorded (16-bit, 4100hz) and converted it into a 1-bit 8hz .cvs file (Which should be what System 11 used for speech according to this blog post by Brian Schmidt: https://www.gamasutr...Integration.php)

 

I then used this command to convert it back into a .wav file: "tz_test.cvs tz_test_out.wav".

 

The final result is something that sounds pretty darn close! It probably isn't perfect, but comparing it to actual sounds from Twilight Zone, it has all the same qualities to it.

 

Thanks for the help, even if it's super old!