Bro my hugest advice is to practice! Play and work with your sound and see what you are dealing with, what you want in the end, and what you need. Having a solid plan will give you a solid solution for it!
Personally what works for me, and dont EXACTLY copy this, just do it on your own. Im saying dont copy, just for your own practice.. Makes no sense to just copy and paste a tutorial straight into ableton now does it?
Ok so grab a snare sound you like, a high end (sometimes you need two different high ends if your snare just isnt quite cutting it [one for your lower mids - upper mids). Cut off the bass half of the high end snare, and adjust as needed so. Then grab yourself a SUPER nice and THICK snare, that pounds! Nothing flat, distorted etc.
And EQ work does magic wonders on the high end. As long as you arent having to MASSIVELY modify one single sound , and in that case just use the best sound you can so you have less work on your end, in the end.
Then simply place a limiter over top of your drum rack or whatever you are using to layer sounds. then place your actual snare sound down on the rack so you can preview it back to yourself.
Put the limiters ceiling at 0.00, then its all about balance here! You have yourself a snare 200-300hz, which is your basic thud, and then 200-20k which is your high end! Play with the cutoffs and Eqing to get the proper sound you want!
Then add a compressor underneath the limiter, ONLY once you are done with the sound itself and maximizing it. And NEVER push the gain soo high that you distort your sound. This is why a wave analyzer program is very helpful in getting a thick snare. In both using your ears and a visual waveform program to balance out your kicks and snares to be fully at level at 0db.
Remember that the limiter can only go to a certain point!!! anypoint after that and it is PHYSICS, you are essentially now putting soo much pressure inside of this, that in order to compensate, it crushes its own sound to make space for extra push of gain, and henceforth, distorts it. So get your Thud At level to 0db, but NEVER distort your sounds..
Ok so now you have yourself a 75% done snare. Go into your compressor, and play with the threshhold, that is basicaly what compresses the fucking living hell out of it. Be gentle always and play with it! You want to maximize your peaks but not going too far past the peaks. For the rest of this really i say Play with it bro. Cause I couldnt tell you how to make an exact snare sound otherwise its just a simple fly through.
Remember for an efficient snare you need these things:
1) Even, Crisp high end
2) Thick, tight thuddy low end
3) a beautiful, crisp, and loud mid end!
AnD!! when I say loud mid end I dont mean the loudest you can go! I mean as loud as a human ear can really handle! Practice! it takes time and lots of effort but you can do it bro! I have 100% faith in you that you can!
And in the end when you put the kicks and snares on to a tune after you are done with them, they should change the entire mood and sound of the song and really bring it all together bro!
