Shaping the lowest octaves of a kick drum or bass track? Conventional EQ boosts can introduce phase smear, make the bottom end flabby, or push transients into uncontrolled clipping without adding actual weight.
Tape machines create low-end density through head bump, a physical resonance caused by tape traveling across the magnetic playback head. Kick Bump isolates this specific analog interaction and packages it into a dedicated processor that delivers focused weight without mud.
The Kick Bump is our advanced native REAPER JSFX plugin built from the ground up to handle this specific challenge cleanly.
Core Engine
The DSP core replicates the complex non-linear behavior of vintage tape head resonance.
- Magnetic Drive Model: Cubic saturation curves gently constrain resonant build-up while adding musical harmonic density.
- Staggered Biquad Network: Two distinct bandpass filters running in series prevent static ringing and mimic real head gap geometry.
- Golden Ratio Q: Fixed resonance damping maintains natural low-end decay across the entire frequency range.
- Sample Rate Compensation: Internal scaling ensures identical low-end response whether working at 44.1 kHz or 96 kHz.
Controls and Workflow
The interface uses a hardware console layout designed for quick adjustments during mixing.
- Center Intensity Knob: Sets the overall drive and wet resonance level, defaulting to a balanced twenty-five percent.
- Horizontal Frequency Slider: Sweeps the center resonance point smoothly from twenty-five up to two hundred Hertz.
- Bypass and Delta Switches: Hardware-style push buttons allow instant A/B testing and soloing of the added sub frequencies.
Kick Bump is lightweight, CPU-efficient, and available now for REAPER.