Producing a punchy kick drum with a "regular" synth?

[do_androids_dream]

Ah, kick drums... the bane of my musical existence. I've all but given up rolling my own these days. I use good quality samples and sometimes underpin it with a sub harmonic generator like code audio edge or something like that. I find that you have to treat kicks differently in every single track as it heavily depends upon how they interact with the rest of the music. Sometimes, after trying to get a good kick sound for some considerable time, i will just try a different sample and magically it works... and other times i'm tearing my hair out because i just can't get any kick to sit right. Gah. Always thought Linplugs Alpha does a good kick - has very snappy envelopes.

[colinssx]

Sylenth's envelopes are great for kicks and other drum sounds because of how snappy they are. Just play around with pitch modulation on a sine wave, add some noise, and you'll be well on your way to a multitude of kick drums. You can also modulate distortion, which can add a lot of flavor.

Here's an example from a patch I made a while back, three variations from the same base sound:

Sylenth Kicks

[teslatronik]

Here is a VSTi i have made for this very Question.
its pure synthesis, no hidden samples like 99% of so called kick "synths" so there is alot more control over each aspect of a kick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z-xFXrO2H4