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Okay... so I'm sure this question has already been asked but I wanted to ask it myself.
I use Ableton live 8 and use the vegance sample pack for my kicks.
My question is what are the steps for making a good kick for house/dance/dubstep.
I guess I've tried layering 2 drums and putting eq on both one messing with low freq and one messing with mid/high freq
and just slapped on sasauge fatter but it still no use plus! im clipping.
i tried adding a limiter to the master channel to stop clipping because it bugs me but i can hear it take away a lot of the dynamics of the whole song.

Just want some tips and tricks for sound designing just a good kick.

What VSTS should i get? freq. etc. everything and the steps you guys do to help me out.
I watched videos and it taught me what i know so far which is the basics. but most of the vsts they use I don't have and my kick doesn't sound like theirs.

I usually leave my kicks pretty dry. I've used reverb sometimes, and sometimes I've purposely clipped my kicks. I really like that sound. I've also used EQ obviously, and some saturation. Some people use various types of distortion such as overdrive and bit crushing. You don't really need much. Ableton's effects should be fine. i don't see the point of buying more vsts to use on your kicks.

Turn those layers down so nothing is clipping?

What kind of layers u have? One with more low end and one with more mid/high end?
Eq those layers so they dont clash, and for example if you like lets say 400-700hz area of the layer 2 just cut those freqs off from the layer 1 etc
Then bus those kicks and maybe some eq for the whole kick sound and slight compress to glue those sounds together...some saturation maybe..

Something like that is one way to do this..

when you audition a sample, be looking at spectrum (the stock freq analyzer plugin) at the same time. The setting, "Accurate-Fast" helps me see what's going on. Pay attention to what peaks where and how your ear interprets what you're seeing on the analyzer. Then audition more kicks and get a sense for how they sound and look on the analyzer.

Now...when you go to layer kicks, use complimentary sounding/looking samples. This will ensure that the spectrum is getting filled out properly and no phase issues occur when layering.

Keep in mind that there are many kicks that look similar on the analyzer, but will sound different. This is the audible characteristics you want to be subjective about or in other words, be choosy about how you want the final kick to sound...I guess knowing where certain notes peak on the spectrum really helps with this but I'm really not at that skill level yet.

Anyways, hope this helps.

Cheers

Thanks guys!! This really helps a lot. I'm prob going to use spectrum . I just need to use the right kicks i guess