My song is fake live. So I'm adding crowd noise, applause, etc. At one point the audience claps along to music. I want it to sound like a crowd of 5,000 in a big auditorium. I have clapped the part about 50 times and doubled, nudged and panned, so I have about 200 "people" clapping. But logistics are such that I was 10 feet from the mic when recording, and it still sounds like ten feet from the mic even with all my neanderthal reverb and EQ experiments. I've added Sonitus Reverb, and tried a bunch of settings, but nothing that really convinces me. Also added Sonitus EQ.
 
Any recommendations for accomplishing this? There's also a brief unison shout, which I've done the same treatment as the clapping, and need it to sound like more people and farther from the mic than it really was.

http://www.freesound.org/browse/

http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=83

Not something I've tried (with clapping), but I might suggest utilising sends from the clapping tracks to 3-4 busses with varying reverbs, and try to get some depth by using short decays (front of auditorium) to long decays (at the back)

Record the crowd noise from one of your live albums into SONAR.
Probably a copyright infringement, though.

I don't think I explained this well. This is an audience clapping IN TIME along with the music, not just end-of-song applause.

IIRC, there is a section of just that on the Humble Pie Rockin' the Fillmore album... I may be misremembering and I do not have it here but perhaps on Are You Ready... I could be all wrong but it seems like I remember a part with Steve doing his chanting vocals with the audience clapping in time, if it is another album... it shouldn't be too hard to find a live album from that era with the frontman getting the audience clapping. All you would need would be a few bars and you could loop and tweak a bit and I don't think anyone would ever know and really, it is just clapping... I think no one should care, just try to cut out any distinct voice in the crowd. There may be something on Frampton Comes Alive too. I don't know why anyone would object to you sampling audience sounds from an album...they would look really petty if they did.
 
Anyway, I hope you get the clap er.. applause you're looking for.
 
J

There is no way you could make a sound effect like this with multiple overdubs and effects.  Not compared to a great sound effect.  I have got many sound effects libraries as I used to do a lot of audio post for TV mixing.  One of my libraries is a Canadian library which is amazing.  Anyway there is an affect of a very large crwod clapping in unison like waiting for a late act to come on etc...(recently Justin Bieber made a crowd wait 70 minutes before he came on. Rude IMO)
 
Anyway this effect is pretty close to what you are after.  But they are doing it faster than I imagine you want it but it would be easy to cut and fade these claps and put them in time with your music I am sure.  Just use say the first 7 or 9 and put them on beats 2 bnd 4 of your music in a round robin.  It will be many bars before the same claps are in the same place. There are two versions of this. There is atmos in between the claps and on the track and if I were you I would also fill the gaps quietly with this atmos between your edited claps to make it sound even more real.
 
The second part of this track sounds like a smaller crowd but the claps are slower and easier to cut but not as grand as the first part which sounds like a very large crowd though.
 
If you PM me I can send you the wave file through You Send It.  It is about 15 Meg in size. Or send me an email and I will make a decent MP3 of it and send it to you that way.  It is a decent stereo image too.

There are samples you can get (many) I'm sure you could find one with the crowd clapping together and then use tools to get it to sit with the beat.

Actually if you go here:
 
http://www.freesound.org/browse/
 
and search for 'bigger group claps' you will find a sound that might work. Someone has manufactured this though, it is not natural or as natural as the effect that I have.
 
A very large crowd clapping in rhythmical unison is not that easy to get a hold of.  I have got a lot of sound effect libraries here and out of all of them I only have this one effect on a Canadian library.
 
But listening to the freesound effect one might be able to make it too. By using a large crowd applause it may be possible to shape the envelope in such a way as to make it sound like a large single clap. A sampler either hardware or VST that allows you to construct ADSR volume envelope shapes would be the go. You would not want each ADSR shape to be the same either. You also need some atmos in between too. Having them leap out of nowhere (with nothing in between) would not work that well either.