Modeling The Sound Of Astronaut Voice Communications

Reproducing the sound of vintage audio systems using modern digital signal processing (DSP) is often desirable in audio production. In order to emulate the iconic astronaut voice communications from the 1960’s, the combined effects of the microphone, communications systems, and background noises of the original recordings must be efficiently contained in a DSP model. The model presented here is composed of four stages: pre-filtering, nonlinear processing, noise generation, and post-filtering. The stage parameters were manually tuned to convincingly replicate two distinct sounds from NASA’s Mercury 6 and Apollo 11 missions. The final model is a simple, parametric DSP algorithm suitable for implementation as a real-time audio effect. This vintage audio effect is relevant to sound design, post-production, and a range of other artistic uses.