How to Create a Cursed Mic or Bad Voice-Chat Effect

A cursed mic effect exaggerates the sound of an overloaded headset, tiny speaker, cheap surveillance microphone, or severely bandwidth-limited voice chat. The result is narrow, harsh, distorted, and usually mono, but speech should remain recognizable enough to carry the joke.

The Low Quality Audio Maker includes a Cursed Mic preset and performs the work locally in the browser. The completed output is PCM WAV rather than a simulated MP3, AAC, or voice-chat codec.

The Cursed Mic recipe

The preset combines:

• 11,025 Hz sample-rate processing;
• 8-bit PCM output;
• mono audio;
• distortion at a strong setting; and
• a 3,400 Hz low-pass filter.

Each control removes or reshapes a different part of the signal. Mono removes width. The low sample rate and filter remove high-frequency detail. Eight-bit PCM adds coarse amplitude steps. Distortion creates harsh harmonics and clipping-like character.

Step-by-step

1. Open the Low Quality Audio Maker.
2. Choose a short recording with clear speech.
3. Select Cursed Mic.
4. Process the default before using custom controls.
5. Listen to the entire Worse preview.
6. Lower distortion if words collapse into noise.
7. Raise the low-pass cutoff when consonants are difficult to hear.
8. Compare at a normal playback volume.
9. Download the WAV and test it outside the browser tab.

Tune for different bad-mic styles

For a telephone-like sound, keep distortion moderate and rely more on mono plus a narrow filter.

For an overloaded gaming headset, keep the voice band recognizable and increase distortion.

For a cheap surveillance microphone, use mono, restrained distortion, low sample detail, and filtering.

For an 8-bit digital effect, emphasize bit depth and sample rate rather than maximum distortion.

Avoid unsafe playback levels

Distortion can create harsh peaks. Start playback at a moderate volume and do not normalize the output to an extreme level merely to make it feel worse. The effect should come from timbre, not dangerous loudness.

Understand the output

The downloaded file remains uncompressed PCM WAV. Its file size can exceed the original compressed recording even though it sounds worse. The completed result reports its actual sample rate, channels, and bit depth because browsers can normalize unsupported sample-rate requests.

For an explanation of every control, read How to Make Audio Sound Low Quality Online. Create the effect in the Low Quality Audio Maker.

Sources and further reading

• Web Audio API specification — filters, waveshaping, sample-rate behavior, and offline audio processing.
• MDN OfflineAudioContext — rendering a processed audio graph into an AudioBuffer.
• WAVE format description from the Library of Congress — background on PCM WAV output.