Generating massive-sounding duplicated noises

Question

I'm using SONAR 5 Producer (I know, it's old.) to record/mix/master my recording. What I'm looking to do is with certain sounds, I'd like to create the effect of having hundreds of instruments without recording a hundred takes.

For example, I'd like to simulate the effect achieved throughout 30 Seconds To Mars' album having massive-sounding hand claps, stomps, and singing. It's my understanding that they actually had fans send in clips of them clapping, stomping, or singing. For someone like me who doesn't have millions of ready and willing fans (yet), how can I achieve this sound?

In the past, I've tried taking about 5-10 takes over one another and running all of them through a chorus, reverb, and delay, but it's still just not there: it doesn't sound nearly as "big."

How can I create this effect?

Answer 1

The important thing about such sounds is that the sources aren't coherent, neither the deviations in rythm and frequency nor the actual audio phases and amplitudes follow any predictable relationships. That's unlike the extra signals normal chorus/delay/phaser effects add, where the modulation is usually at best periodic and the relation very simple, only varied in one of these parameters. What's needed is a randomized-modulation effect which applies time-varyingly all of delay, smooth eq and all-pass filtering to the extra signals. Furthermore, each of these should have a randomized signal level, and the signals should only be mixed after each of them has had all the modifications applied to it, so simply chaining multiple chorus and phaser plugins won't quite work. I don't know any plugin that offers this functionality, perhaps I should write one...

Of course, you should still use multiple seperate takes, and rather than running "all of them" through the FX you should run each of them through a seperate instance thereof, each with slightly different parameters.

Answer 2

You can't create this effect, at least I was unable to do so.

I tried in the past creating street carvanal drums sounds (they're similar to a marching band) but it's kinda useless to use the same sound sample, since it gives a flanger effect.

If the sounds are higher pitched (like claps) it would probably have some frequency cancellation that would render the result rather useless.

For vocals this is even harder, since different people have different voices and that's the magic about choirs.

The small differences in velocity, pitch and time will create the effect that you're looking for, but still it's very problematic.

So what's the best solution? Well... depends. A LOT. For all cases Antares Vocal Kit can help, specially if you want 2 or 3 voicings. There's a CHOIR and DUO plug in that works even with melodic instruments, but it sucks with percussion.

For drums you can try piling samples. This works even for claps and snares, not a good idea for kick drums thou.

To be honest, there's something I learnt with time - it's usually better to have a good sample than trying to fix it. It would be better to search for what you're looking with the massive instruments. There are tons of open source sampling sites that you may get some samples, you can try finding someone (specially on reddit) that would be interested in doing this recording.

If you need a choir or a group of people singing, your friends might help and even craiglist could help for some money.

BTW, I haven't heard the song, so I'm not 100% of what you're asking, but I guess this is it.