I'm with Bit when he says that Freezing is your best friend (along with the other responses). I wonder if you've also made use of Sends as they greatly decrease RAM usage and there's no bouncing needed. It's said to use them when effects are being shared.

So, let's say you have your guitar + vibe tracks with Eighth Note Delay, Light Reverb II, Mud Reduction III. Create a Send with all three effects adjusting the send knob to apply the Wetness. Your latency a RAM will see a much appreciated reduction.

And as far as applying, well, just mute the appropriate Send track. It's kind of like Input Monitoring when you audition with the FX, but don't print them.

I use them quite often now - mind you the individual tracks still have their own FX.

Cloning. I do this, too. I'd like to thank Beagle for pointing this out. There's nothing wrong with cloning an audio track. However, as it's been said that a significant volume boost happens when the instrument patch isn't changed or isn't panned as to not be sitting on top of each other. However, with audio, you may get the same issue, but more often than not, phasing may happen. S, if you do clone a track, nudge either one over so slightly as this will give you stereo separation a la the Chorus effect. Turn the chorus knob (or fader) wide open and there you have it.

This is just one way to get thick sounds (ie: Vocals, Basses, Guitars, Keyboards, Strings even Drums and Percussion)

Again, nudge the duplicate track over ever so slightly of course coupled with nice panning helps as well.

So, while it's good to use an effect, there's a way to utilize the "Home-Made" version. 500 ms delay? As that is equal to an eighth note, clone a track and move it over whether its midi or audio. Home-Made Chorus? Clone, then slightly tweak the cent count. There's more to it, but that's the idea.

If either or both methods give you the desired effect. revel in the satisfaction. This is something you here from production people, where there's a better way to do something and by better, I don't mean wrong, but why put a Limiter on something when you can turn up the volume, but there are other ways if you don't wanna do that. Are they better or worse? It's hard to say because everybody's different, so just experiment to see what happens.

I do realize I'm late to the party.