Dubstepforum.com

Yea i want a sub be on its own. But i just dont know how to get punchy kicks and get my kick play throught subwoofer aswell to get some boom to it...

typically on a normal kick the 'punch' in the sub is right around 80-90 Hz, if you have some way of splitting your sub by frequency, you can just sidechain duck the bit that is around there, if you adjust it right its almost unnoticeable and still allows for the kick to punch through. Alternatively, you can get an 808 sample with a really long tail, and use creative compression to make that tail sound as a sub note would, though this doesn't allow for independent movement of the sub line from the kick pattern. The trick really is getting the right sample. Processing a kick too much to get that low end punch will likely be very obvious.

Often times producers will use a trick of the ear/brain when their track has deep kicks. They'll have 2 layers to their kick, one sub layer and one punch layer. When there is no sub bass playing they'll have both kick layers playing at once, but when the sub is playing they'll have only the punchy kick playing. This can sort of trick you into thinking the kick has kept the same deepness while not actually clashing frequencies all too much.

A lot of people here are hating on side-chaining for some reason, which I don't understand. If you side-chain well, you can keep the large kick playing through the sub and not even really be able to tell when the sub cuts out and comes back. It's a powerful mixing tool that is apparently shunned here for some reason.

I use sidechaning when my basslines are arranged that way so i need to.. but i like big weighty kicks so i often try to work my basslines around the kick, so there is no need to filter the kick.