how to mix a kick that is too suby

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hey im working on a song that the kick is too suby and is muddying up the mix. i dont want to replace the sample since it is the perfect sound for the song. Ive never cut lows on a kick before and someone once recommended to me not to and i dont want to loose the impact and feel of the kick, so im not sure what to do. how do you recommend i process it?
 
Do what sounds right. Maybe sweep for a resonant frequency or try a simple high pass. It might be easier to eq in headphones depending on how low your monitors go. Post up the track and I'm sure you will get some helpful feedback.
 
If there is too much lows, take some away.

The advice about sweeping for a resonant frequency is good. Use a parametric with a very narrow bandwidth (Q) and find the frequency that is screwing things up. Back it off a bit and see if that helps.

Sometimes you can use a gate to tighten things up. A lot of times, when there seems to be too much low end, the kick is actually resonating too long.
 
It's obviously not the perfect sound for the song. ;)

In all cases the answer is either find another source or turn the knobs til it sounds good. Are you seriously waiting around for some weirdos on the Internet to tell you which knobs to turn which way? If you don't have a reasonable idea already, then you need to learn, and the best way to learn is to just get in there and twiddle. "What's this knob do?" Turn the fucking thing and find out.
 
Instead of a high pass filter, I would select a frequency about 80hz or slightly higher, and bring all the frequencies below in down by the same amount, so that the eq line is horizontal below 80hz. High pass tends to reduce more as you go to the lower frequencies, by doing it the way I suggested you reduce the low end of the kick evenly and don't completely loose the low lows.

A little experimentation is needed.

Alan.
 
thanks guys for the great advice :) yeh i like to stay away from hp, ill do some expirmenting with shelfing and sweeping than
 
cut some of the lower-mids to get rid of muddyness... or if that sounds terrible, cut out those frequencies in other tracks to leave room for the kick. Muddyness comes from too much stuff in the same frequency range.
 
Being able to accurately hear below 40-45Hz can be problematic on most systems,
so most times you're left with checking it on multiple playback devices (car_boom box_etc)

A combination of a high pass + some low wide band cutting should do the trick.
There's a fine line between having just the right amount of power and energy needed for the subs to translate
and having too much where they start to take over or having too little where it sounds wimpy... gl
 
All of the advice here is decent. First of all I would get another set of ears on the track because the kick you're using may not actually be what the song calls for, but if you have a vision and you know what you want this is what I would do.

Without hearing the track the order of operations I might follow would be to use a high pass filter or parametric eq to slope off around 80Hz (although without hearing it this is just a stab in the dark - you may want to start lower at 60Hz or as high as 150Hz). This might do the trick, but if you're worried about maintaining the impact of the kick I might use a sidechain compressor and duck the bass with each kick hit.

If you still want more "oomph" you could send the kick track to a bus track and hard limit the bus, but start with the volume very low on the bus track and bring it up until you can just barely hear it. You may have to mute and unmute the bus several times to hear how it's affecting the mix. You could also blend another kick sample underneath your main kick (after rolling off the lows) to get a few more frequencies to play with, but in this case I would probably listen to another song that had a kick sound similar to the one I was going for and match that.
 
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