Punchy Snares

It depends on what type of song you are doing. I sampled a whole roland xp 50 set on tape and used some mellotron sounds from the keyboards of the 60's and 70's to give me a dull and dark sound.

When you distort the tape this work good for more aggressive type sounds like hardcore hip hop with a rock edge to it. I did this for some guys who had a performance to do who liked rock type stuff.

These days I think it is good to find a snare with good dynamics. Before using a compressor try finding a good sample. Try using a compressor to change the level of the attack of the snare and see how you want the body of it. It is also good to layer snares with almost anything. Rimshots make good layers. Claps sometimes. Even open hats, vocal or animal samples mixed in low.

I guess the morale is you use a different effect for the type of mood you are trying to create. Some of the thinnest snares can make some of the hardest hip hop songs. It just matters on what other sounds you are using to complement it.

wait....whaz wrong with the 12-bit conversion on the mpc?......or just mess with the eq on your mixer.....for drum kicks turn up the lows...and snares turn up the mids....the hi's would give too much extra sounds for the snares to be dirty

Is it necessary to have a s900 for compression? Does it have an internal compressor or do you have to hook up an external compressor to it? Basically, I just want to know if it is necessary in the compression department, cause some of ya'll are making it sound like that.

the s900 is a 12 bit sampler. Sampling into it just colors your sound a certain subtle way. I don't think it is neccessary to have one. If you are not using the resampling feature on the machine the sound of the machine is pretty clean. Doing rate conversion kind of darken and gritten up your sound. You may not want that for all songs. And also note the s900 doesn't have a compression feature in it.

A compressor is like an automated fader that turns down a sound when it reaches a certain point. People also use this to shape their sounds ( you can give your snares more attack, or more tail). I think a compressor is neccessary for professional sounding tracks. You just have to be careful, too much compression can deaden a sound. Read the compression tutorial on this site.