Waves Doubler - alternatives??

[JeffSanders]

That sounds awesome.

I just bought Discord 2 (no demo, unfortunately), and it's similar...but it will not duplicate the kind of hi-fi shimmer that clip has...seems to be more suited for synths than vocals and acoustic instruments.

[bduffy]

That sounds awesome.

I just bought Discord 2 (no demo, unfortunately), and it's close...but I doubt it will duplicate the kind of hi-fi shimmer that clip has...

Yeah, I still think Waves rules them all - but mess around with the high and lowpass setting in the upper right; you can get some shimmer going on.

[JeffSanders]

Do you have any problems with your host's PDC making up for the latency caused by Doubler?

Discord always has that strange pulsating warble going on in the modulation. That clip just sounds vital and beautiful.

[bduffy]

Do you have any problems with your host's PDC making up for the latency caused by Doubler?

Discord always has that strange pulsating warble going on in the modulation. That clip just sounds vital and beautiful.

With Cubase? No - the only plugin I can think of, off the top of my head, that displays latency in Cubase is PSP's Neon in LP mode. Otherwise, no problem.

Yeah, I couldn't get Discord to really even out so much. Did you take note of what enjneer wrote? You might want to try a multi-tap delay that has filters and LFO. But again, Doubler is one of the strongest arguments for stomaching Pace/iLok.

[loveless]

I think the old Akai plugins are pretty cheap these days... I seem to remember them making a similar plug called Decabuddy.

[AKJ]

kjaerhus classic chorus does a great job if you just want voice doubling. there is a preset for this. twaek it according to you taste and you won't miss doubler (if you don't use it as a harmonizer)

[mihahe]

Antares Duo is far best plugin for doubling. But you have to set ir right because it can produce crackels.

M.

[cheul]

As I said above, any combo of delay and pitch can get you amazing results.

I'm not sure I get it : so you get 2 delay lines panned Left and Right, with the original vocal track on center or what ?
Then you change the pitch of one of the line slightly down, the other on up... but do you add randomization of the delay and/or pitch offset ? If yes, wouldn't that result in unwanted phasing/chorusing effect, or is it the effect you're supposed to get to achieve thickening of the vocals ?

Reading this thread is interesting, but I'm a bit lost here...

[Barbarossa]

You know, I've yet to hear a plug in do this better than my old Eventide 3000d/se. Someday we'll have some really top notch pitch shifting with some nice modulation ITB.....

Bastard!

[Yossarian]

What about the Vocal Magic plugin from www.recordingschoolonline.com ? I'm not clear on exactly what's going on under the hood but to my ears it does a pretty good job of thickening vocals. The introductory price is $39.

/Yoss

[headquest]

kjaerhus classic chorus does a great job if you just want voice doubling. there is a preset for this. twaek it according to you taste and you won't miss doubler (if you don't use it as a harmonizer)

bduffy - did you try this alternative?

Great work to you and engineer (testing and reporting back) by the way - THANKS

[dhise]

Acoustic-Dry

Acoustic-Waves

Here's an Eventide example:

Eventide

-Doug
http://www.myspace.com/hisesoundlabs

[bduffy]

OK, lots of posts since I left work! Let's try to address them all...

kjaerhus classic chorus does a great job if you just want voice doubling. there is a preset for this. twaek it according to you taste and you won't miss doubler (if you don't use it as a harmonizer)

Yeah, that's just not true. I mean, yes, a chorus can be a doubler and a doubler can be a chorus, but there is nothing near the degree of control you have over each channel, pitch, panning, and modulation as with Doubler. It's not similar at all, but I'm sure it's fine for general thickening.

Antares Duo is far best plugin for doubling. But you have to set ir right because it can produce crackels.

You mean the one that costs $200 and uses Pace and iLok, like Headquest doesn't want?? Sorry, but again this plugin does not offer the degree of control over each channel like Waves. Personally, I wasn't impressed with Avox. But it is an option if you got the cash.

As I said above, any combo of delay and pitch can get you amazing results.

I'm not sure I get it : so you get 2 delay lines panned Left and Right, with the original vocal track on center or what ?
Then you change the pitch of one of the line slightly down, the other on up... but do you add randomization of the delay and/or pitch offset ? If yes, wouldn't that result in unwanted phasing/chorusing effect, or is it the effect you're supposed to get to achieve thickening of the vocals ?

Reading this thread is interesting, but I'm a bit lost here...

Yes, actually. You've pretty much got it! This is how stereo-enhanced vocals are done, generally. It will result in unwanted phasing if you have everything at 100%, say, but you usually try to carefully balance the delays, pitches and levels so you get a "thickened" sound - just like two waveforms for a "fat" bass on a synth - so what you want is "wanted" phasing/chorusing.

What about the Vocal Magic plugin from www.recordingschoolonline.com ? I'm not clear on exactly what's going on under the hood but to my ears it does a pretty good job of thickening vocals. The introductory price is $39.

I've posted about these before, and I think these plugins are the biggest rip-offs available right now; cheap, buggy, CPU-intensive SynthMaker plugins that anyone could cobble together in a night. It's just a bit of saturation and EQ, easily done (better) with free plugins. The last time I tried one of their butt-ugly plugins, I almost blew my ears off with a squealing sound, before it crashed Cubase. Stay away from this hokum.

Here's an Eventide example:
Eventide

Yeah! Sounds awesome, nice and thick. A little more chorus-y than I expected, but then again, moderate the controls and you got some subtle doubling. I look forward to owning one of those one day!

Hey - you want to run my whole track through that?

bduffy - did you try this alternative?
Great work to you and engineer (testing and reporting back) by the way - THANKS

Like I said before, I don't think that's what were looking for here, but then again, I'm not sure what the goal is. When I think "Doubler", I think of a subtle, stereo-izing effect; not a chorus, which I guess the difference is that you want it to be more evident. When trying to tackle the Waves alternate, I think you need control over both channels, mod, etc, so that excludes all your standard chorus inserts, which is why enjneer is talking about delays; so you have control.

After using it in a mix, Discord 2 is fast becoming my favourite; this is a great plug-in, and not totally disimilar to the Eventide, which I believe it was modelled after? Anyway, great plug-in. For the price, it's a shoe-in. If I had to call it now, I'd say go Eventide. But I'll see if my brother's made any discoveries...

[Yossarian]

What about the Vocal Magic plugin from www.recordingschoolonline.com ? I'm not clear on exactly what's going on under the hood but to my ears it does a pretty good job of thickening vocals. The introductory price is $39.

I've posted about these before, and I think these plugins are the biggest rip-offs available right now; cheap, buggy, CPU-intensive SynthMaker plugins that anyone could cobble together in a night. It's just a bit of saturation and EQ, easily done (better) with free plugins. The last time I tried one of their butt-ugly plugins, I almost blew my ears off with a squealing sound, before it crashed Cubase. Stay away from this hokum.

Well, I certainly make no claims of having golden ears but I definitely like what this is doing to the vocals I've tried it on. Zero stability problems or other bugs so far though I haven't used it every extensively yet. Can't say I've seen any excessive cpu consumption either.

/Yoss

[headquest]

After using it in a mix, Discord 2 is fast becoming my favourite; this is a great plug-in, and not totally disimilar to the Eventide, which I believe it was modelled after? Anyway, great plug-in. For the price, it's a shoe-in.

Thanks for that. Discord 2 is getting good press, I see, and very inexpensive. I think I may well snap it up. Also I'm hearing very good things about their new Reverence plate reverb emulation, including some enticing audio samples....