Intelligent Sound

The phaser effect is another common method of producing an uncommon sound. In this process, the signal is divided, a portion of it is filtered with the help of an all-pass filter to create a phase-shift, and then the filtered and unfiltered signals are mixed. The phaser effect, initially, used to be an easier discharge of the flanger effect as delays were hard to apply with the help of analog devices. Phasers are usually used to give an electronic or artificial effect to natural sounds, like human speech. The voice of C-3PO from Star Wars was produced by recording the voice of the actor and treating it with a phaser.

Process:

The electronic phaser effect is produced by dividing any given audio signal into 2 different paths. One of the paths treats the given signal with an all-pass filter, which jams the amplitude of the signal and changes the phase. The magnitude of change in phase depends upon the frequency. Once signals from both the paths are mixed, the out of phase frequencies will nullify each other, producing the phaser's typical notches. Altering the mixed ratio affects the depth of the notches. The deepest of notches crop up once the mixed ratio is 50%.

Uses:

The phaser effect is widely popular for electric guitars. Eddie Van Halen utilized a phaser as a component of his signal chain. The phaser effect is chiefly accountable for the towering and exclusive guitar sounds that Brian May produced with the well known band, Queen of songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Numerous electronic keyboard instruments such as the Rhodes, the Clavinet and the Eminent 310 are often treated with a phaser to improve their sounds.

In motion pictures or TV productions, the effect produced by a phaser is generally utilzed to indicate that the sound is artificially created, like making a natural human sound like a robot computer voice. The technique really works since filtering the frequency creates a sound often connected with sources which are mechanical in nature, which only produce explicit frequencies, rather than natural sources, which create a wide range of frequencies. A vocoder is another effect utilized for related purposes.