Well, after investigating and analyzing countless kick drums, I’ve come to a surprising solution. Producers have been telling me (since I started over a decade ago) that the kick will sound choked and over-compressed. Why? Because the track has already been compressed and limited, thus destroying the ‘character’ of the kick drum. I’ve been told by countless producers that you can’t sample kicks from existing tracks.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice here. Concern #2 - Wait, but is it technically ‘safe’ to sample a kick from an already compressed, limited and fully mastered track?