This may be hard to explain, but maybe you will know what I mean.
 
Sometimes the kick sounds like it hits too hard.  I am looking for a subtle change to make it push instead of hit: like the difference in shoving someone very quickly instead of stricking him with your fist.
 
This is not the same as the top end EQ (2K-3K) that gives you the beater slap.  This is about the general presence of the kick drum.  I want it not to hit as explosively.  This also has the side benefit of getting it sonically off the bass guitar without making it out of time.
 
In other words—same EQ but less attack.  If it were a synthesizer I would change the attack setting very slightly.  I thgouht about a very fast attack and very fast release compressor, but am not sure that is quick enough to take the edge off without making it mushy.  Maybe like a looser head....?
 
I hope this makes sense.  Thoughts?

Sounds like a perfect job for the TS64 (Transient Shaper) to dial down some of the attack, and maybe bring out more of the body of the kick.

yes. ts64 is quite good there. my advice... take several kick drum samples, place them in a track with the ts64 on it (with automation if necessary) then bounce down to a track with a gate and then copy the resulting clips to an audio sample subdirectory.  easy way to build one-shots.

or the PX-64 Percussion Strip.

konradh


This may be hard to explain, but maybe you will know what I mean.
 
Sometimes the kick sounds like it hits too hard.  I am looking for a subtle change to make it push instead of hit: like the difference in shoving someone very quickly instead of stricking him with your fist.
 
This is not the same as the top end EQ (2K-3K) that gives you the beater slap.  This is about the general presence of the kick drum.  I want it not to hit as explosively.  This also has the side benefit of getting it sonically off the bass guitar without making it out of time.
 
In other words—same EQ but less attack.  If it were a synthesizer I would change the attack setting very slightly.  I thgouht about a very fast attack and very fast release compressor, but am not sure that is quick enough to take the edge off without making it mushy.  Maybe like a looser head....?
 
I hope this makes sense.  Thoughts?

I like "pushing" kicks as well. I normally start with an SSL Dave Pensado preset and tweak it. But if you only have the Sonitus plugs, I would normal cut lower mids-say125-300 and then boost between 63 and 100. This gives a morevround pillowy sound. 

the percussion strip adds a lot of overhead with all of the fx that are in the chain.  the other thing i would recommend is setting up a .sfz file with an amplitude eg curve with a slow fade in and a little drop in the high band of eq or maybe a lpf to cut some of the harmonics in the kick sample. check out the specs for sfzs here: http://www.cakewalk.com/DevXchange/article.aspx?aid=108 maybe setting up a group with a seq_length and seq_position mapping to avoid the "machine gun effect".

Is this coming from a real drum kit you recorded, or samples?

If it's a real kit, I'd go back to the source (if you can) and record it closer to how you want it to sound. Choosing a very dark mic, maybe adding more pillows etc. Covering the front skin with a pillow inside the drum (not so that it's touching, just line of sight here) then mic behind that will cut out lots of high frequency content and make it more mellow. Mic inside kick, mic outside. Experiment.

If it's samples, choose a better sample!

Get as close as you can with the raw recording, then tweak as required. More often than not, you'll get a better result if you get the record/sample as close to the finish product that you want than if you use 5 layers of tweaked plugs to moult a sound into something it's not. Even if you think the result you have now is pretty good, wait till you see what you can get with a headstart recording! Sometimes just because something sounds good, doesn't mean it couldn't sound even better. If you have never heard better, you might not even know it exists and think what you have is perfect.

Aside from that, some good stuff already posted up there.

imho, transient shapers work best when, "the better sample," has been chosen.  I am always shaping my drums with shapers..  ( tongue twister ) and I find that I go right for the, "best," samples on my hard disk...


btw, + 1 to the Perc 64..   Now there is just, "a fantastic piece of software."  Best drum channel on the market..   And its free for Sonar users!! wow...

there are some good kick samples in the x2 additional content. theyre all normalized though as far as i can tell though fwiw...

I agree that sounds like an ideal job for the TS-64 or PX64.

One advantage the TS-64 may have over the PX64 is the threshold control on the TS-64 will allow you to filter what is processed and what isn't based on volume level. That may or may not make a difference. Oh and the TS-64 uses Linear Phase processing.

Other than that the transient shaper in the PX64 will do much the same as the TS-64.