Why does an orchestra have many people playing the same instruments? How does it add to the overall performance?
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This is not totally it, but certainly part. In the same way, when you have a crowd of dozens singing something it’s sort of greater than the sum of it’s parts (many people may be off key etc) having multiple players of the same instrument adds slight variations that makes a sound more “broad” and “powerful”.
In audio production some very very very common effects are delay, reverb, and chorus. These are all slightly different, but generally all of them are usually used to take one sound and multiply it in different ways, because it feels more “full”. A simple example, if you have a bland room with way too much absorption, a single instrument playing is very “dead” sounding. Place that instrument in a cathedral, and suddenly the delayed reflections of the “same” sound arriving at your ears at all different times turns it into an incredibly deep, dynamic, emotional experience by comparison.
Then there’s also a matter of chords and the relationship between multiple notes being played at once, and many instruments are best at focusing on only playing a small number of notes (sometimes just one) at once, so having multiple instruments also allows the orchestra to play larger chords than a single instrument could play.
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