Hey talented engineers.
I have a singer recorded on a track and would like to fatten their voice. In the “OLD” days of reel-to-reel, this was done by taking that one vocal track and duplicating it, placing it right on top of the the existing track (not physically of course!). This would give the vocalist a richer tone.
How can this be done in Audacity?
You can open the track and duplicate it multiple times top to bottom. Then offset each track time very slightly with the Time Shift Tool (two sideways black arrows). This is a rotten illustration, but picture the original track on top. The other two are delayed copies.
Audacity will play everything unless you stop it with the SOLO and MUTE buttons.
Pay attention to the bouncing sound meter. That’s your only clue that the volume is going to go up too far as you stack tracks. You can Tracks > Mix and Render to a New Track and then adjust the volume of that one track as needed. Sound doesn’t overload inside Audacity, but you can’t export super loud sound to the outside world.
Koz
You can also look for an “Automatic Double Tracking” or “ADT” plug-in. For a more-extreme similar-effect you can get a chorus plug-in.
You can minimize the “phasing/flanging” (comb filtering) by lowering the volume of the copy or maximize the effect by keeping both volumes equal.
Note that ADT sounds different than true double-tracking where the same thing is played/sung and recorded twice. True double tracking is more natural sounding and ADT sounds more like an “effect”. So, it depends on what you’re going for (or sometimes there is no possibility of recording again).
Audacity’s “Delay” effect can do ADT.
“Automatic Double Tracking” is just a delay effect that (usually) does just one repeat.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ve installed it and it works fine for me; it made my work much faster…