You can make the microphone sound bad and distorted using various effects on a DAW such as EQ, Reverb and Distortion or by exporting using low-quality audio settings.
Otherwise, if you don’t want to use any effects you can make the microphone sound bad by speaking or shouting very loud into it which will create an audio clipping effect and cause distortion.
Breathing into the microphone and loud mouth clicks will add an extra dimension to the bad audio you desire.
Here is a clean audio sample and we will try and work with it when applying effects to make it sound bad:
Speak close to the microphone
Try speaking very close to the microphone, whereas you are almost touching it. If you have a pre-amp, you can turn up the gain knob to make your audio louder for even less pleasant audio experience. Otherwise, you can add some volume later in post with any audio editing software.
DISCLAIMER:
REDUCE YOUR VOLUME BEFORE LISTENING
Shout into the microphone
Shout into the microphone. If combined with speaking close to the mic this will create an ultimate bad quality microphone sound.
Shouting from a close distance into the microphone will cause clipping as you will overburden the microphone’s diaphragm. Also, shouting will make you breathe harder and this will cause extra plosives to make the audio sound even worse.
Breathe into the microphone
Have you noticed how awful audio sounds when recorded outside in a windy environment? You can replicate that by recording outside, or you can also breathe heavily into the diaphragm to achieve similar bad audio quality.
The microphone is sensitive to the air that is hitting the diaphragm, hence any puffs of air coming from your mouth will cause bad distortions.
Add background noise
You can add background noise by creating it in the background. Computer fans, heaters, open windows work well for creating bad background noise. Just playing white noise audio while recording will also do, or you can add any sort of noise when editing your audio in post if you plan to do so.
I’ve recorded background noise here by turning up the gain knob all the way up and recording my background noise which mostly consisted of computer fans nearby.
I’ve recorded the noise within this recording myself, you can download and use it any way you want without any restrictions.
Cause mouth clicks
Add some mouth clicks to make your audio sound worse. When speaking into the microphone touch the roof of your mouth with the tongue and smack your lips often. The saliva breaking will create a bad listening experience.
Or you can use this recording sample and add it to the mix
Distortion effect
The distortion effect as the name suggests will distort your audio making it sound bad. You can adjust distortion levels to your liking.
Although, if you don’t want to edit audio in DAW, a similar effect can be achieved by speaking loud and close to the microphone and utilizing audio clipping.
Export in poor quality
Try exporting audio in low quality to make it sound bad. Adjust sample and bit rate to the lowest possible.
8000Hz sample rate and 8 bit depth MP3 settings will make your audio sound hollow and low quality.
Add reverb
You can add reverb while recording in an echo-y space such as a bathroom or any large room. The less soft furniture in the room the more echo you will hear. Sound waves hitting back and forth between the walls and then reaching the microphone will create the echo effect.
Otherwise, you can use a reverb effect, any DAW has it. You can use Audacity if you don’t want to spend money.
Here’s what you can come up with the reverb effect:
Cut frequencies using an equalizer
Try messing around with the equalizer (EQ) and cutting various frequencies to obtain a desired bad audio quality.
Cut ‘lows’ and ‘highs’ to achieve bad phone quality audio
Cut low and high-end frequencies to achieve phone or portable radio quality audio. The more you will cut the poorer the audio quality will be. If you cut more high-end frequencies you will achieve unintelligible audio and cutting low-end frequencies will remove any warmth within your voice and make it sound tiny.
In this example, I’ve cut frequencies below 500Hz and above 2kHz to achieve phone call quality audio. It is still audibly clear as the main audible frequencies are in the mid-range which we preserved. But it has lost pleasant qualities since we cut lows and highs.
Conclusion
Now let’s combine everything we’ve got here to create the worst sounding microphone effect.
DISCLAIMER:
Before listening lower your volume.