Hey guys i see alot of people asking all the time about how to get a kick to punch through so i thought id share my knowledge about how i do it. You can listen to my tracks here to see if you like my kicks or not 
www.myspace.com/djjdj
Now first off you do really need some good plug ins and good high quality samples to start off with. I know people like seeing cheap alternatives but if you want to make proffesional sounding tracks you are going to be at an immediate disadvantage against the pro’s who use high end Software/Hardware. These are the plug ins i use to get my kicks.
Waves RBass
Waves SPL Bus compressor
SPL Transient Designer
PSP Vintage Warmer (Optional)
A high quality EQ like the Sonnox EQ or the Waves Q series.
Ok so first off i take a few samples of different sounding kicks and mix and match them untill i get a basic sound that is pleasing to the ears. This will usually involve two kick samples, a lower oomphy sounding kick and a higher thicker trance type of kick. All these sounds can be obtained through the vengeance series or any similair sample CD’s. It really doesnt matter ive used kicks out of a reggaeton sample cd before in a trance track. What your looking for is the basic sounds, a low sounding kick and a high sounding kick. Simple!
Now the next tip is something that really helped me alot to get my kicks to punch through and its such a small thing its kinda amazing how much it helps. Basically you want to add a short closed hat sample on top of your kicks. I use the ableton impulse to make my kicks so its also worth messing with your samples decay, release and the individual samples velocities. This is where you will have to experiment and try to craft out a nice sounding kick sample. You can then either leave the midi channel running through your track or just bounce down a sample of the kick and arrange it like that. I highly reccomend you get into the habit of bouncing down all sounds that you like, as you carry on as a producer you should always be building yourself a nice sample library, this is very important as it will help to define your sound. Alot of pro producers use the same drum samples/ fx etc and thats a big indication as to people reckognising your tracks!
Ok so you have your kick sample now onto processing! First off you need to put in an ableton utility and set the width to 0.0%. This is because you really want your kick to be in mono and right at the centre of the stereo field. Next i will slap on an EQ to tidy up my sound, usually i bump it a little at around 60hz and to bring out the click in your kick set a small q and sweep from about 3khz to8khz untill you find where your click on your kick is sitting. Give it a bump and your done and dusted! Ok next comes what i feel is one of the best plugins for bass sounds but often seems miss-used. The Waves RBass. Ok what alot of people do is stick in this plug in and just yank the intensity controll up and blow out everything surrounding them at first then end up with a weak over compressed sounding kick. The trick with this plug in on kicks is that you dont increase the intensity but you DEcrease it! Its as simple as that, the increase of intensity of this plug in works better on basslines, dont ask me why it just doesnt really work that well on kicks. On the RBass plugin you will have to move the frequency slider at the top untill you find a nice frequency for your particular kick and the style of music your making. For House kicks i tend to find the lower 60-75 hz sounds better sometimes even lower to like 55-58hz. A frequency that will always work no matter what style your making is at around 80-82hz this just seems to give instant punch to your sample. But its a case of trial and error and experimentation. Ill update this later with part 2!
Cheers.
