These kind of super crunchy drums...

[dubdub]

youtu.be/TlxAhrCWQVM

Obviously some kind of combination of saturation/bitcrushing/filtering/compression. But when I crunch things that much with Decapitator (SDRR doesn't go far enough without sound breaking up too much, from what I've tried) I just end up losing all the transients and the ommph and the sounds start to break up more than I'd like. I think there's some filter action going on aswell but I tend to go over the top of it. I don't know, these tracks just hit that kind of sweet spot between crunchy, transient oomph and pumping that I can't seem to get. It's obviously a bit over the top but I love that crunch and ooomph. I mean, that's literally all it is, sexy crunch and a nice groove - the loop is dead simple and there's barely any arrangement going on - if it was any cleaner I'd be piss boring. Is there compression on the drum bus going on in this track? Sounds pretty compressed to me but i'm not exactly sure. Resampling also helps to add some crunch but I don't think that's 'it'...

[rktic]

The magic of tape saturation.

[Lost to the Void]

All the hats sound relatively clean in comparison to some elements and they aren't really breaking up when bigger sounds are present. So I would say some stuff is being distorted by bus, rather than everything together.

The thing is sometimes to get crunch it's better to combine drives\amps\saturation\distortion etc. Rather than pushing one unit hard to get it crunch but also losing transient, it can be better to use 2 different units of whatever in series to get some crunch. And don't be afraid of wet\dry knobs.

I did a sort of demo of some of these techniques with this track (although it was mainly to discuss crunchy hats)

[dubdub]

The magic of tape saturation.

What do you use for tape saturation? I have Satin which can get pretty crunchy but driving it tends to really fuck with the frequency response (I guess that makes it more real etc. lol ). I think VoS had some nice tape saturation stuff but I'm trying to stay 64bit right now.

The thing is sometimes to get crunch it's better to combine drives\amps\saturation\distortion etc. Rather than pushing one unit hard to get it crunch but also losing transient, it can be better to use 2 different units of whatever in series to get some crunch. And don't be afraid of wet\dry knobs.

Yeah, that makes sense. Generally I get better results really going in with 1 FX unit rather using a bit of 5 different ones but I guess here it's useful. I used to have all these freeware sat plugs that I didn't use much I gueas i'll dig tem out. again to get some varied saturation going

[rktic]

What do you use for tape saturation? I have Satin which can get pretty crunchy but driving it tends to really fuck with the frequency response (I guess that makes it more real etc. lol ).

That's the point Use an aged tape and go. If you only want the muffled highs, watch the input level - don't drive into saturation. You can also just run your hats through it. Or have different busses with different levels of shittyness.

The track you posted sounds a lot like those lovely 90s Relief Records, Dance Manias etc. Which were all recorded on rather cheap tapes. You can also hear some tape bias issues on the track.

[Lost to the Void]

Yeah, that makes sense. Generally I get better results really going in with 1 FX unit rather using a bit of 5 different ones but I guess here it's useful. I used to have all these freeware sat plugs that I didn't use much I gueas i'll dig tem out. again to get some varied saturation going

Don`t think only in terms of saturation, Saturation as a whole doesn`t really "crunch". Driving an amp, an overdrive effect, distortion, even fuzz etc can be better. " 2 saturators in a row just ends up muddy. Saturation and distortion though, or sat and overdrive...... You get some harmonic thickness and some crunch.

[dubdub]

What do you use for tape saturation? I have Satin which can get pretty crunchy but driving it tends to really fuck with the frequency response (I guess that makes it more real etc. lol ).

That's the point Use an aged tape and go. If you only want the muffled highs, watch the input level - don't drive into saturation. You can also just run your hats through it. Or have different busses with different levels of shittyness..

I don't know, if I really drive it it tends to muffle the highs too much for my taste and if you add it back with pre-emphasis you get this weird sizzle in the highs. I'm also not a big fan of that kind of really responsive dynamic saturation where some sounds are breaking up and others aren't, sounds a bit weird to me.

Don`t think only in terms of saturation, Saturation as a whole doesn`t really "crunch". Driving an amp, an overdrive effect, distortion, even fuzz etc can be better. " 2 saturators in a row just ends up muddy. Saturation and distortion though, or sat and overdrive...... You get some harmonic thickness and some crunch.

I was using "saturation" as a catch-all for harmonic distortion and honestly i'm not so good at picking out the difference between them

What do you use for overdrive? I only have Ableton's overdrive, which is nice for sound shaping but a little heavy-handed since it comes with an EQ/filter.

[Lost to the Void]

I tend to use amp plugins if I am ITB