Hello, I´ve been trying to find a solution how to make kicks sound like this. It quite works when using a waveshaper or if I crank the limiter up. But there is too much distortion. I want to achieve this effect but without heavy distortion. It sounds like clipping, like when the kick hits the soundwave shapes to a square shape. With some hi-hat it make a really good crunchy effect to it.
Maybe try adding in a slight amount of distortion before limiting or by adding in distortion with some parallel processing (make a copy of the kick, distort it, then mix it it with the original kick). The fact that the kick is lacking punch and you can hear it ducking suggests that it is hitting a limiter pretty hard. I'm a fan of the sounds I get on kicks and basses with this free distortion plugin: Audio Damage // FuzzPlus3
I made a tutorial a while back on making drums hit a little harder using a limiter/compression.
The majority of this can be done with the stock plugins in whatever DAW you're using. For a transient shaper, you can try one of these or play around with the attack setting on a compressor: Free Transient Shaper VST Plugins!
