Free Bleep Sound Effect
The bleep sound effect TV uses to cover swearing: one steady 1 kHz tone, plus a short blip, a double bleep and a low one. Download it or press it live.
Updated · Tested by the Facecam team
Censor beep
1.0 s · MP3 · 10 KB
Play it into your mic
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5 censor beep sound effects to download
Main take1.0 s · 10 KB
The bleep sound effect TV uses to cover swearing: one steady 1 kHz tone, plus a short blip, a double bleep and a low one. Download it or press it live.
Long2.0 s · 20 KB
A two-second bleep for a whole sentence of swearing.
Blip0.5 s · 5 KB
A tiny blip that covers one short word.
Double1.2 s · 12 KB
Two bleeps with a gap, for two words in a row.
Low tone1.5 s · 15 KB
A lower-pitched bleep that's easier on the ears.
Where it fits
- Covering a word in an edit, or pretending to.
- Bleeping a friend's mid-sentence spoiler live in voice chat.
- Comedy: bleeping a perfectly innocent word like "Tuesday".
- Keeping a podcast or stream clip clean before you post it.
Related sounds
- Bruh1.2 s
- Record scratch1.2 s
- Error0.8 s
- Crickets4.0 s
- Beep0.8 s
How we made it
“A single TV censor bleep: one clean 1 kHz sine tone beep, flat and steady, no other sound”
The variations
- Long
- “A long TV censor bleep: one clean 1 kHz sine tone, steady”
- Blip
- “A very short TV censor blip, clean sine tone”
- Double
- “Two TV censor bleeps with a short gap, clean sine tones”
- Low tone
- “A TV censor bleep with a deep low 400 Hz clean sine tone, steady and soft”
- Loudness
- -16.4 LUFS
- Peak
- -9.6 dBFS
Play it in Discord, OBS or Zoom
Press Use these sounds in calls, then pick Facecam Virtual Mic as your mic. Step by step: Discord, OBS and Zoom. For games, the Facecam desktop app.
- Short enough for Discord's own soundboard (5.2 s max): Server Settings → Soundboard.
More about this sound
About our version
Ours is exactly one second of a single 1 kHz sine tone, the length of one or two words. In an edit you trim it to fit; live, hold your sentence for one beat after pressing.
The other takes cover the usual cases: a half-second Blip for one short word, a two-second Long bleep for a whole phrase, a Double for two words in a row, and a softer Low tone at 400 Hz that's easier on the ears in long edits.
A plain sine tone survives every voice codec without distortion, so it sounds the same in Discord as in your editor.
Why the bleep is 1,000 Hz
Broadcast engineers already had a 1 kHz sine tone at hand: it was the standard test tone for checking audio connections. When stations needed something to put over a word, that tone was right there, and it stuck, though nobody can say who used it first. Hiding words is older still: radio covered them with music in the 1920s, and by the 1960s "bleep" was a verb.
Lower tones around 400 and 480 Hz are common too, which is why the low take is here: it sounds softer and older, more like a radio delay than a TV bleep.
How to bleep a word in a video
- Download the MP3 and place it on a track above the word.
- Cut or mute the original audio for exactly the length of the word.
- Trim the bleep to the same length and start it a frame early, so no first letter slips through.
- One short word: the blip. A whole phrase: the long take.
Questions
Is a bleep the same as a censor beep?
Yes. Bleep, censor beep and beep censor all mean the same sound: a tone laid over a word. "Bleep" is the name TV gave it.
What frequency is the TV bleep?
1,000 Hz (1 kHz) is the classic. 400 Hz and 480 Hz are common too; our low take is 400 Hz.
Can I bleep myself live?
Yes: send the board to Facecam, keep Lower my voice while a sound plays on, and press the pad as you say the word.
Why does the bleep sound so loud?
A pure tone puts all its energy at one pitch, so it reads louder than a voice at the same level. Lower its pad to about 60% in a call, or the clip gain in your editor.
Can I download the bleep noise on its own?
Yes. Each take, the 1 kHz bleep noise, the blip, the double and the low tone, is a free MP3 with nothing else in the file.
