Powerfully Pounding Painfully Punchy Snare Drums?

[tpantano]

So, I'd love to incorporate some acoustic snares into an EDM track, over the traditional really processed, clap+snare layers used in most dance music.

I have gigantic library of them with Maschine.

However, I'm looking for some advice on how to get them to really punch your heart with an intent to kill. My usual snare 'mixing' consists of gaining and limiting the hell out of my sample, and while it's loud it doesn't have the low-mid range unnff (it's a word, look it up... if it's not there you're using the wrong dictionary >.>;)

Here's a song with the punch I'm speaking of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuD4zOeGkOE

I'd like to start making dance music with more dynamics and punch like that, rather than the constantly 0,0 dB crap I usually do T_T

[Timo]

Two processes: compression, and envelope-following (also called transient shaping).

Most famous hardware envelope follower is the SPL Transient Designer but there are many software alternatives now too (including a software version of SPL Transient Designer). DigitalFishPhones have Dominion free plugin, and there's Stillwell Transient Monster, Sonnox Transient Modulator, Schaak Audio Transient Shaper, etc.

Obviously compression is par for the course, great for adding punch to the attack and bringing up the release. Long attack (~40ms, to let the attack portion of percussive drums through before clamping down on them, makes things sound more natural than processed), shortish release (~90ms, to bounce back quickly), a higher ratio (anything upwards from, say, 4:1), and threshold to suit.

You may also need compression and/or limiting (or some kind of saturation deviece) when you use a transient follower to avoid clipping. Attention to levels is critical.

[CharlesFerraro]

What the snare is doing in context is critical. make sure the snare takes up a lot of headroom and frequency space in your mix. So dip other tracks around the low meaty part of the snare (prob around 150Hz) and then overly compress the sample while applying a lot of makeup gain. Increasing the attack of the compressor will allow a transient 'snap' through while lightly increasing the release will hold or sustain the decaying body of the sound.

Again, context is everything. The sound of a snare sample alone doesn't tell you how much "unnff" it has till you've nestled it in a mix. Its all about practicing by making as many mixdowns as you can.