Fake ADT tactics and techniques

Posted on May 06, 2008 11:37 pm
thermocaster
Appenine
Member Since: Dec 13, 2004

So I've been fooling around with double-tracking vocals here lately, while also reading up on some Beatles recording literature. As some of you know, the engineers at EMI created something called "ADT", or Automatic Double Tracking, where they basically recorded the vocal on two different tape machines, at varying tape speeds...creating that well-known Beatles vocal sound.

Since I'm all digital here, I can't exactly record at varying speeds...and there don't seem to be any good ADT VST plug-ins. Does anyone have any methods that they use to double-track off the same source vocal? I'd love to hear some ideas.

I've been playing around with one myself that has given some mixed results so far. I set my two microphones up side-by-side, run one directly into the soundcard, and then run the other through my UX2, with a slight delay and a little compression. I record them as two separate mono tracks simultaneously. It hasn't exactly duplicated the sound (mostly because I'm not sure what delay speed and wet/dry mix to use yet), but it does seem to add some fullness that was lacking in the vocal department.

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