Making New Songs Sound Like Old Recordings

Post » Thu Feb 10, 2011 10:12 pm

I'm wondering if any of the modders have any tips on procedures or effects to use to make a new song sound like an older lower quality recording? Specifically in Audacity (cause that's all I've got access to :laugh: )
User avatar
aisha jamil
 
Posts: 3436
Joined: Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:54 am

Post » Thu Feb 10, 2011 11:40 pm

You might want to look at the beginnings or ends of old recordings to see if you can get some of that audio "cackle" and "pop" to layer onto the newer tracks. The other problem though is just that the singing style and instrumentation is really different these days. Worth a shot though, I'm sure there are more tricks out there.
User avatar
STEVI INQUE
 
Posts: 3441
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 8:19 pm

Post » Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:05 pm

looping the anolog pops and cracks is a good strategy, but make sure you get the levels right so it's not overbearing. Also, selectively applying some bandpass filters should do the rest. Those old recordings sound so old-timey in part because of the lack of fidelity. Just like to get the "store loudspeaker" sound from any recording, you can just cut anything over 8 kHz off and anything below ~125 hz, to simulate cheap speakers.

Just as a guess, I would apply a 7 kHz low pass filter, with full attenuation kicking in around 8k, and do a high pass filter around 100 Hz. Lastly, downsample it to mono and 22 kHz fidelity, maybe even 11 kHz.
User avatar
Chris Guerin
 
Posts: 3395
Joined: Thu May 10, 2007 2:44 pm

Post » Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:20 am

looping the anolog pops and cracks is a good strategy, but make sure you get the levels right so it's not overbearing. Also, selectively applying some bandpass filters should do the rest. Those old recordings sound so old-timey in part because of the lack of fidelity. Just like to get the "store loudspeaker" sound from any recording, you can just cut anything over 8 kHz off and anything below ~125 hz, to simulate cheap speakers.

Just as a guess, I would apply a 7 kHz low pass filter, with full attenuation kicking in around 8k, and do a high pass filter around 100 Hz. Lastly, downsample it to mono and 22 kHz fidelity, maybe even 11 kHz.



Oooh I'm gonna try and understand/find all that stuff and give it a go. Thanks for the info.
User avatar
Chloe Yarnall
 
Posts: 3461
Joined: Sun Oct 08, 2006 3:26 am

Post » Thu Feb 10, 2011 6:17 pm

I don't know about Audacity, but all of that is pretty easy to do in Adobe Audition (or even the old Cool Edit Pro 2)
User avatar
A Boy called Marilyn
 
Posts: 3391
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 7:17 am

Post » Fri Feb 11, 2011 5:32 am

Initially, I used the telephon effect plugin for Audacity, but regardless of what setting I chose it severely degraded the sound such that the songs became virtually inaudible (strange that this seemed to work just fine when I was using it to edit MP3s for FO3). So I googled for "Audacity AMRadio" and found some links on how to adjust the equalization, and it seems to work ok (not great, just ok).
User avatar
Stephanie Nieves
 
Posts: 3407
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:52 pm


Return to Fallout: New Vegas