Here's an incredibly simple trick I discovered to synthesize incredibly hard and groovy snare sounds... The typical THWACK that just makes the crowds move. You need nothing more than a noise source, one (yes one!) band pass filter and a flexible envelope. Hook up the source and your envelope and tune your snare with the band pass filters cutoff frequency and bandwidth (also known as CF and Q-factor). Then set up your envelope to have a "knee". If the volume graph for your typical snare envelope looks like this: | \ | \ | \ | \ |_______ Make it look like this | \ | \ | \ | \ | \ | \ |_______________ The psychological effect is that the listener is 'punched' towards the knee with great force, and then gently released, constantly keeping him or her in that gentle musical trance place, while still being an extremely man-moving sound. It's great to help induce that 'dance trance' we pop musicians are all looking for for our shows. Actually, you can get the same effect with an extremely strong compressor; however, with this little trick you do the same thing and use no extra CPU power. Carlo PS: ZynAddSubFX is a great way too implement this; use a Free-Mode envelope and add an additional 'point' for the knee.