Vocals:Single Delay 20or so ms.or "Doubling"

[William Choi]

I use this setting on a lot of my vocals to get a cybery sound. A single delay of about 20-30milliseconds at a 50% dry and 50% wet.
But all the plug-ins I try using for this effect makes the vocals sound thinned out. And is totally obvious just looking at the wave form.
This doubling effect, I tried this manually.(recording another take of vocals matching timing and all) And I think it sounds a lot better.

Does anyone know the physics of this?
I figure it has a lot to do with Phase differences.
Essentially, using the plugin, it's making a duplicate copy of the wave form and shifting it forward by the 20-30 ms. ANd i guess some of the harmonics or phased out because they are so close to the original track?

You guys are smart. I'd like to know more about this. Could really help in understanding waveforms and fx.

 

[MrBlackthorne]

If the vocals sound thinned out, you are probably getting some sort of phase cancellation between the main track and the delayed tracks. This occurs when the 2 tracks' waves are nearly opposite eachother. The easy fix for this is to invert the signal. You should notice a substantial increase in sound when you do so. This can be done with a hardware processor or simulated in software. I know Cubase can do it, if you use that.

The voice delay effect you describe is documented in many sources that I have read, and they almost always recommend inverting the delayed signal to avoid the problem you are discussing. I have used it in some of my recordings - something cool to try is to take the vocal track and make it stereo, then offset one channel a bit from the other. This will make a stereo delay effect that will accent the track to one speaker... kindof a neat sound.

Hope this helps out.