First of all, to save everyone time and bandwidth writing posts about how this can't possibly work, this is a really stupid idea. There are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same result, and really, it all comes down to writing a better chorus anyway. No one in their right mind would sit down with a calculator and pretend to do things that have musical relevance. In fact, I feel kind of dirty and guilty just posting this, so I apologize in advance and accept full responsibility for thinking up something this dumb. So, there's nothing to see here; kindly move along. Thank you.
 
 
 
 
[Okay, now only the geeks and the terminally curious are left...welcome, have a seat...get out your calculators, you'll need them.]

So I was working on this song that had a shaker and tambourine part, panned left and right of center. The rest of the mix was fairly dense, and it seemed like I just couldn't get a good mix with the percussion. If I mixed it low, the two parts got lost and the song lost some drive. If I mixed them high, they stuck out and didn't integrate well with the rest of the track. I could not find a "split the difference" setting where they had enough level to drive the song but didn't sound overbearing.
 
I tried a bunch of tactics, most involving dynamics (more level while being less spiky - close) and EQ. Unlike the notch filtering, what I wanted was for the parts to be a little more prominent, not less. I thought what the heck, so I reversed the notch filtering to create slight peaks. That didn't work.
 
To make a long story short and not dwell on the other failed attempts, I added a Sonitus delay and set the delays to correspond to the song's key by calculating the period. The two delay lines were tuned an octave apart. For example if 3.0 ms produced the right pitch, the other delay was set to 6.0 ms. I didn't apply any feedback.
 
Mixing the delayed sound with the dry imparted a sense of pitch and with a very subtle mix, the percussion parts blended in with the melodic instruments better. It was easier to find a middle ground between too low and too high. I also found I needed to do this only with the shaker, but this also helped differentiate it a bit more from the tambourine so the two parts were more distinct in the mix.
 
Again, like the notch thing, this is not a panacea but another tool that at least in this case, solved a problem. I haven't tried it on anything else yet, but assume it's applicable mostly to unpitched sounds unless you're into some kind of special effect. It might work well with soft cymbal hits or something...but as with my other tips, I'm putting this out there before I get too far along to see if the Cakewalk Forum Brain Trust comes up with any novel applications. 

Anderton
...I added a Sonitus delay and set the delays to correspond to the song's key by calculating the period. The two delay lines were tuned an octave apart. For example if 3.0 ms produced the right pitch, the other delay was set to 6.0 ms. I didn't apply any feedback.
 
Mixing the delayed sound with the dry imparted a sense of pitch...

It probably takes more than 3 cycles for a note become audible, so maybe some feedback would help.

It's definitely audible, even without feedback - it's basically a comb filter. The delayed sound mixed with the straight sound produces the sense of pitch. 3 ms is the period for a 333.33 Hz wave - close enough to E (329.63 Hz) that it sounds in tune. So the pitch is basically the same as the E at the 12th fret of a guitar's high E string, and the octave lower delay is pitched like an open high E string. Making the pitch any lower didn't sound very good for what I was doing.
 
Feedback does have its uses if you want to make the effect more obvious. However, this isn't really an electronically oriented song, it's heavy on vocals and relatively clean guitars, so adding feedback sounded more out of place - like a flanger stuck at one spot on its LFO cycle.
 
I'll post an example of a song that uses this technique, I'm finishing the mix either tonight or tomorrow. I ended up applying it to another percussion part as well (not the tambourine, a synthesized one that sounds more like a small cajon). The resonator effect is subtle, but it makes the mix work better.

Here you go, link good for 7 days. It's not the song, it's two isolated tracks but it shows you definitely don't need resonance to hear a pronounced effect.
 
https://www.hightail.com/download/ZUczYkJvYXlvQUpjR01UQw
 
It's only a 1.5MB file. Two percussion parts are playing simultaneously. The first half is without the resonator, the second half with. Not only is there no feedback, I pulled the delayed/dry sound ratio back to about 40/60 to make the effect a little less pronounced. I may pull it back even more before the mix is done.
 
Of course this doesn't mean much without context since the whole point is how it fits into a track. so I'll post a link to the song as soon as it's finished.

I have a bunch of shakers and a handful of tambourines and encourage people to pick instruments that seem to sound good while they are actually playing their parts.
 
I wouldn't bring it up, but seeing how you took the time to lay down the dirty dare-n-sneer in the intro I figure someone should stick their neck out and offer an antidote to mixer fixer work flow preoccupations.
 
all the best,
:-)
 
 
P.S. Just about anyone, if they don't want to waste time driving down to a store and auditioning what is for sale on the shelf, can make a cool collection of shakers with stuff around the house. Personally, I enjoy checking out shakers at Guitar Center and Sam Ash.  Each one seems different and unique.
 
For tambourines, it's good to have a few brass and a steel versions laying around as they all hit the mix differently and if you have choices you'll find it's easy to hear a stinker and easy to hear when one seems just right.
 
 
 
 
edit spelling

 
 

Anderton
 
It's only a 1.5MB file. Two percussion parts are playing simultaneously. The first half is without the resonator, the second half with.

I haven't used headphones, but I can't hear a difference happening anywhere in the file.
Should there be a second file ?
 

Paul P

Anderton
 
It's only a 1.5MB file. Two percussion parts are playing simultaneously. The first half is without the resonator, the second half with.

I haven't used headphones, but I can't hear a difference happening anywhere in the file.
Should there be a second file ?
 

I just downloaded it to check, and the second half indeed sounds different from the first half...I'm listening over the 5" Rockits connected to my laptop. It's a subtle difference, but I'm sure you'll hear it over headphones. Of course turning up the feedback makes it more obvious, but the demo was to show that you don't need feedback to hear a difference. Maybe I should have left the wet/dry mix at 50% to make the effect more obvious, but the setting was what I used in the song. FWIW I can hear the difference in the mix if I bypass.
 
i also think it's the kind of thing that once you hear it, you ears are trained to hear it. Like with the bus Console Emulator...when I first tried it, I couldn't hear any difference whether it was bypassed or not. But after using it for a while, I "learned" what the sound was and can now tell the difference, regardless of whether I can see the bypass button status.

mike_mccue
I have a bunch of shakers and a handful of tambourines and encourage people to pick instruments that seem to sound good while they are actually playing their parts.
 
I wouldn't bring it up, but seeing how you took the time to lay down the dirty dare-n-sneer in the intro I figure someone should stick their neck out and offer an antidote to mixer fixer work flow preoccupations.
 
all the best,
:-)
 
P.S. Just about anyone, if they don't want to waste time driving down to a store and auditioning what is for sale on the shelf, can make a cool collection of shakers with stuff around the house. Personally, I enjoy checking out shakers at Guitar Center and Sam Ash.  Each one seems different and unique.
 
For tambourines, it's good to have a few brass and a steel versions laying around as they all hit the mix differently and if you have choices you'll find it's easy to hear a stinker and easy to hear when one seems just right.
 

I totally agree. I also highly recommend the container for Trader Joe's "Fair Trade Wake Up Blend Coffee." It's big enough to give a different kind of shaker timbre - sort of bassy as opposed to trebly. Or in wine-tasting terms, "full-bodied, with a robust timbre and a hint of high cut."
 
The intro was mostly late-night self-deprecating humor because I think it's pretty darn geeky to sit there with a calculator and enter times into a delay plug-in from 1956 (or whenever the Sonitus line was created). But I also wanted to keep the thread on track with comments on the practical ramifications instead of the theoretical ones. For example I'm wondering it this could help tune a tom if the drummer wasn't particularly careful about tuning up before a session. Or maybe it would be good for untuning a tom - perhaps it would sound better as a flatted 7th. Like I said, I'm just throwing this out there to see what other people find. It seems like this might have more applications than just percussion, like maybe adding a tonic and fifth to Swedish Death Metal power chords played in the key of the song 

It seems to have added a little length, which seems the most noticeable change.
 
Thanks for the tip,
Max Arwood

Here's an illustration of the wave file as viewed in a wave editor.
 
The waveform view shows that the the peaks and RMS barely change from before to after.
 
The Spectral Pan view shows that the panning is much wider after than before, which is the effect of having created a comb filter that canceled out much of the centered energy.
 
The Spectral Phase view shows that the phase activity has become less coherent, which is perhaps why the after part can attract attention at lower levels when it is incorporated in to a mix.