Mixing drum loops...

[purpleduck]

To achieve punchiness, I always use individual samples for each percussive sound and compress and EQ each of them, and then group them together and compress and EQ the whole group.

And this of course is common practice. But I would sometimes like to use sampled loops and breaks instead of individual sounds. Aphex Twin and other electronic artists seemed to have done this a lot, using the amen break and others.

What I don't understand is how you then mix the sampled loop and make it punchy in the mix. Do these people just process the amen break as a whole? Do they layer extra kicks and snares? Do they slice the sample and then process sounds on different outputs (which means the kick might not really be just a kick but a kick with a hat layered on top, etc.)?

When I began, I would not process my sounds individually, and I dread going back to those muddy mixes without any punch. But that was the consequence of not processing the drum sounds individually. What does one do?

[infernal.machine]

Do these people just process the amen break as a whole? Do they layer extra kicks and snares? Do they slice the sample and then process sounds on different outputs (which means the kick might not really be just a kick but a kick with a hat layered on top, etc.)?

Yes.