Thanks for the kind words. I'm not on IDMforums, although I do have an account there.. just never did anything with it.
I'm glad you think it sounds clean and wide, that's exactly what I'm going for and I feel I've really improved my mixing tremendously in the past couple of months.
It's like day and night compared to last year, lol. Glad to see that confirmed!
The recipe for the kick is incredibly simple:
-Use a drumsynth, not a sample (48khz/32bit)
-Saturate/excite
-EQ
-Transient shaper, no compressor
I only compress the drum bus slightly with a tube compressor and there's another on the master bus. They're more there for more saturation/colouring than actual dynamics management.
I also like to use tape emulation on drums if I want a more cutting, harsher sound... but I have a new tube compressor VST I wanted to try out.
Thanks for checking!