I recently wanted to record a message in the voice of a Dalek (for a silly little project I’m doing).

I looked for tutorials, but they all involved ring modulator software that only worked on Windows PCs.

I worked out how to do this on my Mac, and so decided to create a tutorial for Mac users.

Here’s a 10 minute video tutorial:

If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s the short summary:

• Install Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/
• Download the Ring Modulator Nyquist plug-in: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Ring_modulator
• Install it in ~/Library/Application\ Support/audacity/Plug-Ins/Ringmod.ny
• In Audacity
  • Effect -> Ring modulator…
    • Modulation frequency: 30Hz (preview values between 20Hz and 80Hz to see what you prefer). I believe over the years the official Daleks varied from 20Hz to 50Hz.  Some Dalek impersonators find 80Hz works well for them.
    • Amount: 100%
    • Waveform: 0 = sin
    • Pulse bias: 0%
  • Effect -> Distortion
    • Distortion type: Hard clipping
    • Clipping level: -6 dB
    • Drive: 50
    • Make-up gain: 50
  • I created a Macro in Audacity called “Dalek” to apply both effects with these parameters.

Tips on getting the voice right:

• People think Daleks have no emotion, but actually they do feel hatred, and they’re very emotional about that!
• They are also very uptight, so that has to be reflected in the voice.
• Have a tight mouth, barely moving, like a ventriloquist.  You can achieve this by making a forced smile with the edges of the mouth pulled right up.  The lower jaw barely moves.  It gives quite a nasal sound.
• The pitch rises during the sentence, as they get more and more excited.
• The pitch often rises during a word, almost like a question, if you can do that – it feels quite unnatural!
• Of course, break up long words into separate clipped syllables: Ex-ter-min-ate!

Have fun :-)