Replicate the sound of an old, outdoor horn loudspeaker using Adobe Premiere. No plugins or external programs needed! Great for military bases, country fairs, racetracks, megaphones and more.
Feel free to share and adapt this tutorial. Please credit and link to this article if you do.
The emphasis in this tutorial is “quick and easy.” The goal is to create a workable sound treatment using only built-in tools included with Adobe Premiere.
For this tutorial, I’ll be making use of track-based filters, like in my futzed audio tutorial. If you’ve never used track-based filters, I suggest giving it a quick read for some background on the technique.
Once I discovered that the GuitarSuite filter is perfect for simulating old, distorted speakers, it was very easy to tune the settings to mimic the sound of a PA system ( often called a “tannoy” in the UK). The effect really starts to sing once you add a Multitap Delay filter to add a touch of “slapback.” This simulates the effect of our sound bouncing off a distant structure or landmass.
1. Edit your fake PA announcement and place it on a dedicated audio track in your timeline. Since we’ll be using track-based filters, it is essential that this track contains only audio you want to be given this particular sound treatment.
DO: fill in the gaps between the dialogue with room tone from the same source file. If needed, add some small crossfades to smooth out any sound bumps at the cut points. (I didn’t need for this particular example).
DO NOT: leave empty space between dialogue.
2. You can see in the illustrations above that I’ve filled all the gaps in my track with room tone. Because of the way the GuitarSuite filter works, this is essential. If you skip this step, the “crackle” of the PA will disappear during these silent moments.
3. Open the Audio Track Mixer and add a GuitarSuite filter in slot two of the audio track you’ve allocated for the PA effect. If you need a primer on the Audio Track Mixer, read my previous tutorial. Choose “TalkBox A” as your filter, and dial in the rest of your settings according to this screenshot. Note that I’ve bypassed the “Amplifier” section of the filter.
Feel free to tune the settings to your liking!
Annoyingly, the attributes for this filter need to be selected one at a time from the dropdown menu before they can be set. Also note that “level 3” is mislabeled as “level 4”
4. In slot three of the same audio track, add a Multitap Delay filter, located in the dropdown menu under Delay and Echo>Multitap Delay. This is the filter that will simulate the slapback effect. Unfortunately, double clicking on the filter does not open up a separate parameter window. This seems to be a bug in Premiere.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be using two out of a possible four “taps” in the filter.
The first delay will replicate our sound bouncing off a very close object to the loudspeaker, like the back of the bandshell at a county fair. The particular delay timing I’ve chosen seems to add a touch of phase cancellation to the voice. To my ears, this add a lot of realism to the effect. The second delay will add a true echo, with some sustain (feedback). This simulates the sound bouncing off a far object or land mass, like a distant grandstand.
Here is a complete list of my settings:
Delay 1: 0.160 seconds
Feedback 1: 0%
level 1: -8 db
Delay 2: 0.530 seconds
Feedback 2: 5.50%
Level 2: -22 db
Level 3 (mislabeled as “Level 4”): -∞
Level 4: -∞
Mix: 50%
I haven’t listed all the attributes for tap 3 and 4: Since Level 3 and Level 4 are set to zero, it doesn’t matter how you set the other attributes.
5. Finally, I’ll add a Stereo Expander in slot four of the filter bank. I’ve dialed the spread very wide, to push the non-localized quality of the overall treatment.
Here’s the original audio, without any filters applied:
And here’s the final sound treatment:
Photo by Hammad Anis on Unsplash
Audio courtesy of freesound.org