Freesound Forums

I was watching a Family Guy episode that was doing a parody of Poltergeist and I heard a really interesting sound that I remembered from the original movie. Whenever someone spoke from within the other dimension their voice would sound like this "hhhhhhhhHHHHi everyone". I wondered if it was some special effect or something but after searching the internet for a while I discovered that it's quite simple.
Here's how it's done:
Step 1: Get your dry vocal sound and reverse it.
Step 2: Apply reverb with a medium length decay time.
Step 3: Record
Step 4: Open up the new wet vocal file and reverse it.

Pretty basic I know...but the effect is awesome isn't it? I've been experimenting with different reverb plugins to get different textures.
Try using SIR, GlaceVerb, Kjaerhus Audio "Classic Reverb", Ariesverb, or any interesting reverb effect you find out there.

Enjoy!
-Dan

Ahh, so that's how they do that! Thanks for the post, DJ Chronos!

DJ Chronos

Pretty basic I know...but the effect is awesome isn't it? I've been experimenting with different reverb plugins to get different textures.
Try using SIR, GlaceVerb, Kjaerhus Audio "Classic Reverb", Ariesverb, or any interesting reverb effect you find out there.

Enjoy!
-Dan

Or try convolving with sounds other than normal reverb impulse responses; can also be fun.

xinaesthete

DJ Chronos

Pretty basic I know...but the effect is awesome isn't it? I've been experimenting with different reverb plugins to get different textures.
Try using SIR, GlaceVerb, Kjaerhus Audio "Classic Reverb", Ariesverb, or any interesting reverb effect you find out there.

Enjoy!
-Dan

Or try convolving with sounds other than normal reverb impulse responses; can also be fun.

^^
Good call! That's a cool thing you can do with SIR, especially with drum reverb and adding cool textures from other drum kits.

DJ Chronos

^^
Good call! That's a cool thing you can do with SIR, especially with drum reverb and adding cool textures from other drum kits.

My personal favourite was a recording of a bit of selotape stretching and then snapping, applied to some synthetic drums... gave a really organic, rich quality I thought... (wonder where that file is now). I went through a phase of doing quite a bit of this sort of stuff; using sword sound effects from the game Thief and other things. Talking of Thief, that featured the 'poltergeist' reverse-reverb effect quite extensively, I seem to remember. Such a good game, but I digress. Of course, I'm not suggesting people use other people's copyright materials for anything other than possibly their own amusement.