Can't get that kick quite meaty enough? Compressed the hell out of it, and it's still not shaking the subs the way you want it to? If you've tried everything and still can't get it right, do what the big boys do, and steal one! Find a track with a kick that's really rockin', isolate just the kick in a seperate clip (it's best to get it from the intro or the outro, before any other instrumentation comes in, make sure you don't get any of the following hat in with it), and drag the clip into a drum rack.I've spent literally days trying to get a kick that pounds the way I want it to until a producer friend of mine told me that he and pretty much every other producer he knows (which includes some of the big players in the House scene) all steal their kicks from somewhere else! Is it moral? Probably not. Will anyone know? No. Will anyone care? No.
Something I found out just the other day: If you're making a real chugger, and you want to give the drums an extra sense of urgency, zoom right in, and move the snare hits a tiny fraction before the kicks. Even if you're looking for it, you should barely be able to tell they're not hitting at exactly the right time.
