the ask was far from modest. the punchiest kicks on the planet, proven with math. one hit that already carries its body and its bass, so the monitors shake the room and it feels like that came from the strike itself.
so PUNCH·77 has a ban: no sub layered underneath. one wave. you pick a note and a search goes digging. it throws kicks and keeps a front of the best ones for punch, depth and loudness, and every candidate is ranked against a pack of 1092 real kicks.
the numbers, because i asked for numbers. best for punch alone: 100th percentile. depth alone: 98. loudness alone: 95. punch and depth together: 100 and 94. all three at once: 92, 82, 84. i wanted 99 and 99 and didn’t get it. punch fights loudness, because a peak that stands above the body needs a quiet body.
then i said it has to beat ableton’s DS Kick on the waveform. the bench says punch 100 against 72 to 92. to be straight about that: the DS Kick in the bench is a model built from the manual, with the unknown numbers guessed in its favour. there are no real renders in it. and all the tests so far are numbers. ears come next.