how do you go about getting this kind of snare? ive done a lot of work on my drums over the past few months, but i still cant get that real snap people like skrillex, deadmau5, wolfgang gartner and other electro wizzes get. Is it all to do with the sample or is it sidechain compression? it sounds quite loud in the mix but surely it isnt just gain thats getting that loud sound? hopefully someone here can help because ive struggled to find some decent advise on the matter and hopefully there is someone else who shares my burden 
kris
do you compress the snare itself?
yeah iv been wondering the same, some of the snares i hear are really cool but can find them at all in sample packs…but if u look at the glitchy house tutorial, the drums in that seem similar to what your talking about as in some of the techniques
normally how i go about processing the snare is ill get the sample match it up with the kick so they sit nicely together, sometimes but not every time i layer the snare with other samples. then ill compress it, and eq it so it doesnt steal headroom from unnecessary areas. normally would also cut all the bass out so it sits on the kick well. and depending on the track parallel comrpession also. but ive been trying to compress less lately i read on anjunabeats forums from above and beyond how tracks are sounding really overcompressed and have lost dynamics but that is a totally different can of worms and now im rambling on…
but yeah i do compress, whether im doing it right nor not though…
Transient shaper!
ive heard about transient shaping before, but what exactly are they…does anyone have any good free ones? or any tutorials on this or at the very least some theory?
I make dubstep, so this is pretty much what you have to do. You need to layer your snares together. Make sure you pick out some dope samples first and foremost. You always need to layer your snares. One for body, one for the attack, and one maybe for the white noise portion. You need to EQ each separately so that they fill in nicely. There are a number of things that you can do after that. You could compress them slightly to make them gel together. You can do anything after that. Saturate. Distort. Resample. Wash. Rinse. Resample. Repeat. Its just the nature of the genre. Just make sure it cracks and hits hard, and you should be tight.
[quote]howiegroove (02/02/2011)[hr]I make dubstep.[/quote]
I never knew u where producing Dubstep Howie . would like to hears your stuff 
thanks howie some great advice there!
[quote]alinenunez (02/02/2011)[hr][quote]howiegroove (02/02/2011)[hr]I make dubstep.[/quote]
I never knew u where producing Dubstep Howie . would like to hears your stuff :D[/quote]
Yeah man. I’m not ready to come out yet though. I got alot of things down, but my beats are merely mediocre. I want to get them down before I let anyone hear anything. I will say though that I use alot of my analog gear and the noises I get sound dope as hell.
Ableton’s Saturator works wonders on snares and other percussion elements. Makes them way louder without changing their output level. This combined with other techniques will be what you’re after.
- Layering up your snares
- Compression with a medium ratio, slow attack and play around with the release to preference.