If you’re recording drums, or even using samples, one of the glaring faults that frequently shows up is the lack of that low bottom end on the kick. Sure, we can add it with some low-frequency EQ, but many times that just makes the mix sound woofy and uncontrolled. A better way is often to add that low end girth with a subharmonic generator. There are quite a few plugins on the market that do a fine job at this, but the new Little Foot from Boz Digital Labs provides some new parameter controls to get creative as well.
Little Foot is divided into three sections; one labeled OOMPH, which is the subharmonic portion of the plugin, the Gain section, and a display that shows the waveform of the kick, subharmonic, and note that it’s tuned to.
Oomph is interesting in that it features a Frequency control to tune the subharmonic, a Gain parameter to control how much of the sub is added, Sustain to determine how long the sub note holds after it’s initiated, and Threshold to make sure that the sub is only being triggered from the kick and not from extraneous leakage.
The Secret Sauce
Little Foot’s real secret is the Shape selector, which provides three types of waveforms to choose from – sine, multiwave, and triangle.
Sine provides a clean sub tone that we expect from a subharmonic generator, but the multiwave selection adds a bit of extra soft harmonics so the kick can be better heard on small speakers. Triangle provides strong 2nd and 3rd harmonics that allows you to change the character of the kick completely.
The Gain section has both Dry and Master controls. The Dry gain has an in/out button, as well as a high-pass filter selector. This little button is actually the key to a cohesive low-end kick sound as it keeps the frequencies of subharmonic and dry kick from clashing.
Little Foot has a introductory price of just $29 (normally $49) and has a trial period so you can try it before you buy it. It works on both Mac and PC platforms and all plugin formats.
You can find out more here, or watch the video below for more details.
