How do I achieve loud and heavy bass kicks for big room tracks without sacrificing my mix and avoid clipping? I side chained them but they still sound boring. More than loud I want them to be heavy...
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Loud bass kicks
I think the heaviness or "bigness" comes from the kick taking a lot of the frequency spectrum (low, mids, highs). You can start by layering two kick samples, one with an interesting high frequency attack and another with a good amount of body (low mids) and low end. Filter them appropriately so that they don't have clashing frequencies. You can then apply distortion (Tube or Waveshaper) to "glue" them together and make the kick bigger. You can use a BandSplitter to apply distortion to only a certain range of the frequency spectrum, to avoid a boring sound. Then you can apply EQ and especially compression to reduce the dynamics of the kick and give it more power. It ultimately depends on your arrangement and the other tracks, but what will make the kick cut through, besides side-chain compression, is a good amount of information in its mid range. Hope it helps.