Hey guys, I’ve been experimenting with creating a Kylo Ren voice effect. I came up with a couple tests and welcome your critique! (Go easy, I just started learning Adobe Audition about a week ago! 
) So if you have any suggestions on how we could replicate his voice modulation, that’d be greatly appreciated!
Google drive folder with all the following files
Movie Reference
Test A
Test B
Kylo Ren’s actual voice seems to be quite straightforward, yet very nuanced. Using fairly subjective terms, the bass to me seem quite smooth, yet driving and powerful. The voice is slightly muffled because he is speaking into his mask. It’s of course pitch shifted down a little (but perhaps less than you think) and there really isn’t that much distortion on it. It seems to mostly be distorted only on the “middle bulk” of the voice. There’s still a lot of undistorted subtleties. Overall, the entire voice is still pretty clear behind the effects. It sounds decently compressed, but if you look at the wavefrom, there’s still a decent amount of dynamic range.
Test A I think has too much distortion and compression. Though the original voice acting wasn’t too bad, especially after the compression & distortion, it comes out very monotone. Test B is better on the distortion front, but I really don’t like that overbearing bass, which ended up nothing like the original.
The effects rack was as follows. The only differences were in the individual parameters of each.
- Dynamics Processing (For fuller voice)
- Parametric EQ (For fuller voice)
- Pitch Shifter
- Single Band Compressor
- Distortion*
- DeEsser
- (Test A only) FFT Filter, lowpass ~15k
One effect I found came pretty close was the Guitar Suite (settings in Google Drive folder). It was still a bit off though, but not bad for a first swing at it. Some people have said they hear a subtle reverberation in his voice… but I sorta don’t. Analog Delay worked well for a very subtle reverb, but it honestly ended up being too much layered with distortion on top of it.
*Could someone explain what exactly the distortion effect in Audition does? Settings (used for test B) in Google Drive folder. I read Adobe’s user manual on the effect, and I understand that your input is a certain dB range, and your output maps the input to another dB. But I don’t understand how/why that translates into this overdriven distorted clipping type effect. I’ve noticed that if you add a narrow spike/valley around a certain dB range, it’ll distort that particular loudness range. Also, the more abrupt the change, the more distorted apparently. But that’s about all I got, not sure how to go about constructing a distortion effect other than a bunch of guess-and-check.
I look forward to your feedback and hopefully we can all learn something in the process!
