OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Telephone Voice Effect Online
Make Any Recording Sound Like a Phone, AM Radio, Walkie-Talkie or Megaphone
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How the Telephone And Radio Effect works
This telephone voice effect online tool also does radio. Make a voice sound as if it is coming down a phone line, out of a transistor radio, over a walkie-talkie or through a megaphone. Pick a preset, set how strong the effect should be, preview and export. The processing happens in your browser and the file is never uploaded.
Telephone voice effect online: getting a good result
Every one of these devices does the same two things to sound: it throws away the frequencies it cannot carry and it distorts what remains. A telephone line passes roughly 300 to 3,400 Hz, which is why a caller sounds thin and boxy but stays perfectly intelligible — the consonants that carry meaning live in that band. A radio speaker adds a bit more top and bottom but overloads readily. A walkie-talkie is narrower still and hisses. A megaphone is a horn driven hard. A gramophone is narrow, noisy and slightly lumpy.
Presets. Each preset is a band-pass filter — a high-pass and a low-pass together — followed by a saturation stage and, where appropriate, added static or a sample-rate reduction. Telephone uses the classic 300–3,400 Hz band with mild saturation and the 8 kHz sample rate of a real digital phone line. AM radio is a little wider, more saturated and has a low bed of static. Walkie-talkie is narrow, heavily driven, noisy and crushed. Megaphone is loud and hard-clipped. Old gramophone is narrow and dusty with an 11 kHz crush that mimics an acoustic horn.
Amount. Scales the distortion and the noise while leaving the band-pass alone, so a hundred percent is the full character and twenty percent is just a hint of the tone with the grit removed. The filters are always fully applied because without them there is no telephone; if you want only the filtering, the low-pass and high-pass tool does that.
Mono output. All of these devices are mono, so the output is a single channel. Stereo sources are mixed down before processing, which is exactly what happens when a stereo mix is played through a phone.
Uses. Voice-over for a phone call in a video or podcast, a radio announcement in a game, an intercom in a film, a lo-fi vocal in a song, or the intro to a track before the full mix kicks in. It also makes a decent test of intelligibility: if a recording is still clear through the telephone preset, it will survive any playback system.
Preview and export. Preview renders the full file through the effect chain so you hear exactly what Export will save.
FAQ
Why is the output mono?
Because every device the presets imitate is mono, and a stereo telephone would sound wrong. The channels are summed before processing. If you need the effect in a stereo file, run the mono result through the mono-to-stereo converter afterwards.
Can I make the phone effect subtler?
Lower the amount, which reduces the saturation and noise while keeping the filtering. For an even lighter touch, skip this page and use the high-pass and low-pass filter with a 300 Hz and a 4 kHz cutoff, which gives the tone without any grit at all.
Which preset is best for a voice in a video?
Telephone for a phone call, AM radio for a period broadcast, walkie-talkie for police or military dialogue and megaphone for announcements or protests. Preview each; the difference is mainly in how much distortion and noise sits on top of the band-limiting.
Does it work on music as well as voices?
Yes, and it is a common production trick — a chorus that suddenly opens up from the narrow telephone band into the full mix. Music through the walkie-talkie or gramophone presets becomes very crunchy, so start with the amount around fifty percent.
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