Voice Filters Guide

Intro

When the series first started, we had to come up with a voice filter for the helldivers' helmets. In the game, character voices are slightly muffled, resonant, but nothing complicated. It probably uses an impulse response of a tin can, or something like that. However, in the CGI intro cinematic by Goodbye Kansas Studios, the voice filter briefly used for John Helldiver is cleaner, amplified, and noticeably differs from the game. So I decided to do something similar to not only give voices a very distinct helmet characteristic, but to also make them cut through the mix because episodes may go through both quiet moments and heavy combat.

In my effects chain I'm using a combination of Kilohearts Comb Filter, McDSP FutzBox, and Waves CLA Effects. The latter two plugins can be easily substituted with free alternatives. For convolution reverb I can recommend MConvolutionEZ while equalization, distortion, and phaser are nowadays available in all DAWs.

It's important to note that all processing is done on voice lines that are already cleaned up, equalized, compressed, and normalized. Sometimes novice sound designers tend to skip this step, and go straight for filter design, which often leads to messy audio.

Regular Helldiver

First in the effects chain is the Comb Filter with its default settings. This creates first layer of resonance due to super tight space of the helmet.

Second is FutzBox. This one gives the audio an even more distinct layer of resonance, cleans up some frequencies, and distorts the audio just a tiny bit.

1. Sim: Glass Cup, 50 tuning.

2. Filters: 24 dB HPF at 240 Hz, 12 dB LPF at 18000 Hz.

3. Distortion: Lo Fi with Amount of 5 and Intensity 25.

Third and final plugin in the chain is CLA Effects. This is what amplifies the whole thing, and gives it a subtle sci-fi feel through its phaser.

1. EQ: Filter, set to 5.

2. Distortion: Drive, set to -5.

3. Pitch: Tape Phase, default setting.

Everything else is disabled.

Truth Enforcer

The chain remains essentially the same, but before the comb filter there's a -12 semitones pitch shifter. In my chain it's GForm.

Inquisitor

The chain remains the same, but this time we do a little trickery to make it bassier.

First, duplicate the track and apply -12 semitone pitch shift on the duplicate. Give it a 24 dB low pass filter at 450 Hz so it becomes very muffled and bassy. Boost it a little if needed.

Merge these tracks (or route them both into the same bus if that's your workflow).

Now do the same thing as with regular helldivers, but use different settings on FutzBox and CLA Effects.

In Futzbox, set the sim tuning of the glass cup to 100 (i.e. reset it to default) and the mix to 50%. This makes the audio slightly cleaner.

In CLA Effects, switch EQ from Filter to Top and set it to 0. This also ensures that the lower frequencies of the trick we did in the first step come through a little more.

Super Destroyer

In Episode Four there's one line of dialogue spoken when the Super Destroyer arrives. This one was processed using Blue Cat Audio Flanger (default settings) and Soundly Place it (Walkie-Talkie).

VHS

In Episode Four there's a morning cartoon segment that looks and sounds like it's playing off of a VHS tape. Doesn't make any sense given the Ultra 40k Celestial HD nature of the era, but we did it for fun.

To make this segment sound old af I used BPB Dirty VHS with the following settings:

• Mode: 80s

• Pitch and Tone: 60

• Noise: 17

• Dirt: 30

• Chorus and Spread: 0

The audio track was also switched to mono to give it an even more authentic sound.