Help! Weird fluttering sound in recordings (soundclip attached)

Branshen

This happens when I combine two vocal tracks together (one lead, one harmony). The two tracks sound fine when they are separate.

The audio clip first starts with the two clips combined and then plays the lead line alone at 0:23.

https://soundcloud.com/brandon-shen-shi-han/georgia-combined-flutter/s-zrsGG

Any ideas what is going on and how to fix this?

Modulus_Amps

Soundcloud URL is not valid??

Branshen

Modulus_Amps said:

Soundcloud URL is not valid??

Fixed it! Thanks for the heads up. 

andy_k

struggling to hear a 'flutter', could it be some tuning issue? or maybe some combined harmonics, as in the effect when tuning 2 guitar strings,, still not immediately obvious to me--but i'm not listening on good speakers.

spark240

Yeah I hear  it, almost like a warm distortion on the lower notes, How about when the FX are off ?

gringopig

.

Branshen

andy_k said:

struggling to hear a 'flutter', could it be some tuning issue? or maybe some combined harmonics, as in the effect when tuning 2 guitar strings,, still not immediately obvious to me--but i'm not listening on good speakers.

You are right. This is what it sounds like.. you can get it when two strings are at a certain pitch from one another..

spark240 said:

Yeah I hear  it, almost like a warm distortion on the lower notes, How about when the FX are off ?

Yes, that's exactly it. Not got any effects on these tracks but slight reverb on a send of the lead line.. don't think they produce this?

gringopig said:

Sounds like signal clipping to me. It would tie in with one vocal below the threshold but twice the signal starting to distort...

Hmm. I've checked my levels quite diligently throughout so I don't so.. but I'll have a look again..

spark240

Def sounds like its the harmony causing it, have you tried a multi band EQ, or dynamics to pull up the offending frequencies?

wave100

Have you tuned the vocals? If so, might be an artefact of that.

Funkfingers

gringopig said:

Sounds like signal clipping to me. 

Me too.

Could be two signals, bussed into the same plug-in, overloading its input.

Could be two instances of the same plug-in, running in parallel, placing excessive demand on your computer's CPU. (Less likely. Wrong sort of audio artefact.)

Branshen

wave100 said:

Have you tuned the vocals? If so, might be an artefact of that.

Nope. Haven't touched them.

Funkfingers said:

gringopig said:

Sounds like signal clipping to me. 

Me too.

Could be two signals, bussed into the same plug-in, overloading its input.

Could be two instances of the same plug-in, running in parallel, placing excessive demand on your computer's CPU. (Less likely. Wrong sort of audio artefact.)

I've checked the chain all the way. No clipping. 

spark240 said:

Def sounds like its the harmony causing it, have you tried a multi band EQ, or dynamics to pull up the offending frequencies?

Yea.. I do think the harmony is causing it. EQ doesn't seem to work. repitching the harmony line using a repitching device seems to help somewhat but not as much as I thought it would..

It's rather baffling but anyway, I've decided that the harmony lines don't serve the song anyway, so I've gotten rid of them altogether...

Gadget

Buffer size?