Thread: Creating "poltergeist" voice effect with Audacity

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Hi Guys, although this isn't a prop in the usual sense of the word, this does make a nice addition to props or your haunt in general. This is my first time posting a tutorial here, and wasn't sure if this was better suited on the How to section or the Halloween Music section. Please move to correct forum if need be. Hope you enjoy, and find it useful. OK, here we go.

Goal: To create the creepy voice effect much like in poltergeist

What You'll Need:
1. Audacity (Here)
2. Sound Clip you wish to alter
3. Gverb Audacity Plugin (Info here)


Step 1: Install Audacity and open the program. you will be greeted with a screen like this:




**Note** We will need to load the sound clip into the program that we wish to alter. You can load a clip that is already on your computer, or we can record on using our mic. for this step we'll assume that we already have a file on the computer.

Step 2: Click on File > Open > (navigate to your file, select it, and click open on the dialog box) Your audio file will now be in audacity ready to be creeped.




Step 3: This is the part we will be adding the effects. First, Click on Effect at the top middle of your screen. Choose the reverse effect. You will notice the audio changed. If you play it at this point, it would of coursed be revered... clever eh? ok moving on.

Step 4: After the Audio is reversed, we will go back to the Effect menu option, and this time we are going to select the Gverb option. (assuming you installed the gverb addon, I will touch on this after this tutorial) The Gverb Option window will be displayed here. This is the area where the main effect happens. I could go into detail as to what all these options mean, but theres really no point. Slide the bars until you get a sound that you like. for the purpose of this tutorial i will show you the settings i used for my audio that i altered.



Step 5: After finding a setting that fits your tastes, click ok on the Gverb window. You are now back to your audio file. At this point we will now:

Step 6: Click the Effect option one last time, and select Reverse again.

Click play. It should have a nice echo ghostly effect to it. Here are the audio files i used so you can get an idea of before and after sounds.

Before Alterations

After Alterations




Side Notes. Gverb Info(taken from wikki) GVerb is currently included in the 1.2.6 Windows release of Audacity, and with current Beta releases for both Windows and Mac. It will be underneath the divider in the Effect menu.

Alternatively, GVerb is also distributed as a separate download inside a suite of LADSPA effect plug-ins. This suite is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

How to install: After downloading from the appropriate link above, the plug-ins should be installed as follows:

* Windows - Run the .exe installer and set the installation path to the Plug-Ins folder inside your Audacity installation folder. This installation folder is normally in your Program Files folder, so in that case install the plug-ins to:
C:\Program Files\Audacity\Plug-Ins.

* Mac - The plug-ins should be installed to:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA/ or
~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA/.

* Linux - The plug-ins should be installed in:
/usr/lib/ladspa/ or /usr/local/lib/ladspa.

I'm a longtime Goldwave user, and I'm still trying to get this sound just right. I have Audacity, and will try your setup right away. Thanks for the screen shots - this makes it easy to see what parameters to play with. I already know where I'm going to use this effect. Many thanks!

Cant wait to hear the finished product. I've been playing with audacity since last October, and its pretty good. There are a ton of options to play with, and tons of add ons. Hope it works out for you. If you have any questions feel free to ask. good luck

I'll look for more add-ons, too. I wasn't aware of those options for Audacity.

omg this is soooooooooo cool. my mind is all ready flooding with ideas of how to utilize this. many many many thanks!

Uknow,

thanks for the kind comments. Id love to hear others peoples vision of this tutorial. so post them up. Also, if anyone has any requests for audio items, let me know, and ill work with you to try to get something that works

I've been doing this effect for years..If you don't want to use Gverb, You can use Goldwaves reverb effect. Does the same thing, and you can just use one slider to preview the sound before applying effect. Some caveats regarding what kinds of sounds you can alter...the must not contain music, or echo effects. Some words that begin with hard sounding consonants like "K" or "P" don't reverb well, but still work. Although childrens voices work best, it works well with other pitched voices, such as the one djchrisbaker did for my ground breaker. He supplied the voice, I applied the "Carolanne effect" as I call it. It really is a cool effect, I'm sure you guys will get a kick out of it. Thanks for posting the how-to!

Thanks, lonerogue2, for the tip! I love playing with Audacity.

Dr. M, I love the sound effect of your groundbreaker!

its not letting me hear the clips, it just sends me to godaddy.com...?

Sorry guys, youll have to give me until monday to update the audio files. I recently cancelled my rgiammaria.com domain and registered a new domain geared to halloween. I'll have the files back up and running sometime early next week. thanks for the heads up on this one.