Vocal Thickening Trick Improvement

[Terry PetersParticipant]

Hello Warren,
I watched with great interest and so THANK YOU for the vocal thickening trick. While doing some different research on "faking" ambient room mic's using multiple duplicated tracks and delays to get the effect, I stumbled across something that I think might benefit you...(turnabout is fair play after all)
In the "vocal thickening trick" your video suggests making 8 tracks and then using 10ms and 24ms as the timing offsets between the slightly de-tuned duplicated tracks, which works "pretty well"...
While I have used the "vocal thickening trick" to great success using your recommended timing offsets of 10ms and 24ms, I sometimes would also use 10ms and 18ms offset times to "reduce the spread" effect, also, I had noticed some audible resonances coming from the duplicated tracks that tended to produce that "autotune" kind of sound...
Now back to the DISCOVERY...
Instead of 10ms, 18ms, or 24ms offsets... Where I can hear audible resonances being generated which I am attributing to that "autotuned" sound, I have discovered a great success in using 11ms, 13ms, 17ms, or 23ms instead...
WHY you ask???
Well it's because 11,13,17,and 23 are ALL PRIME NUMBERS... This seems to be important as the delay times of "prime number" offset value pairs can never "sync" the way even numbered offset value pairs do because the timing offset values can never be harmonic multiples of one another.
I KNOW, this sounds like a lot of BS, But...
Try this yourself and I think you will find that your thickened tracks take on a clarity that you CAN actually discern in the mix!
Well, maybe this little note will be helpful... I sent it here because I didn't know how else to get this info to you.
Cheers! Terry

[Arthur LabusModerator]

Not bad Terry, not bad ...
Must keep it in mind.

Great thoughts !

[Jason DavenportParticipant]

Math in music? Who Knew 😉 That's a good trick to know Terry!

[Anonymous]

I wanted to create a new topic about "The vocal thickening trick (VTT)" before I noticed your topic. Therefore, if you do not mind I will add my improvements right here.

First, I want to say that I had never faced any issues like you mentioned, but that probably is because I only use the default settings. Except for the tuning variable, I do not change the anything. Probably that is the reason why I do not fall into the resonance artifacts.
However, your explanation makes perfect sense. It is a fact that prime numbers are only divisible by one and the prime itself, so indeed, like you wrote, you do not get them synchronized. Never thought about it actually. Thanks for sharing!

About the improvement that I use:
Warren illustrates the VTT by literally copying the track several times, but what if you edit a word or sentence of the source, later on in the session? It means that you have to copy the edited version again to the other tracks.

What I like to do instead is to create four stereo FX channels with the Waves - Doubler inserted. Then I use four channel sends on the source track and route them to the input of the four FX channels. If you make changes to the source now (Edits, EQ, whatever), it instantly also affects the VTT. It works a lot more convenient for me.

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