PSYPROD Audio · Kick synth
DaKick
A kick synth designed by a psytrance producer, for kicks that hold up on festival systems. Every stage of the kick is drawn by hand and visible, from the pitch sweep to the last cycle of the tail.
Private beta | Free licence for selected testers | macOS: AU · VST3 | Windows: VST3 | Full release 2027
Why I made it
I’ve been producing psytrance since 2002, and on a festival rig the kick carries the whole track. Over the years I learned that most kick problems aren’t really about the sound you design. They’re about phase: a boosted low end that keeps ringing after the kick should have stopped, or a tail that ends mid-cycle and smears into the bass.
So I built DaKick around the signal flow. Every phase-altering process, the EQ, the filters, everything that bends the waveform, sits before the final amp envelope. The envelope always has the last word, so nothing rings past the point where you end the kick. And because the phase is smooth and infinitely adjustable, locking the kick to your bassline becomes a quick, precise move instead of a guessing game.
Then there’s the creative side. Wavetable position and mix can each follow their own envelope, which opens up a whole field of transient design, or kick bodies you simply haven’t heard before. Load your own Serum or Vital wavetables and it goes further still. DaKick is the kick synth I wanted in my own studio.
— Samy (CPU)
The phase pin
The cyan line on every display is the phase pin. Pick a moment in the kick, and DaKick makes the waveform cross zero exactly there, even with filters, EQ and wavetables in the chain. It’s measured, not guessed.
In practice: the tail of your kick ends exactly where you want it, cleanly, so it lines up with the bassline that follows. No click, no leftover half-cycle, no fighting in the low end.
The sound chain
Every MIDI note triggers one kick. The sound runs through seven stages, and the real output waveform is drawn behind every curve, so what you see is what you hear.
Oscillator and wavetables
A pure sine, with an optional wavetable blended in. 16 built-in tables: 8 classic shapes and 8 designed specially for kicks (Squish, Whip, Zipper, Slime, Juice and more), each keeping a solid fundamental so the body never disappears.
Load your own Serum or Vital wavetables; they are saved inside the preset and the song. Wavetable mix and position can each follow their own drawn curve over the length of the kick.
Pitch, EQ and filters
Draw the pitch sweep with up to 16 points and a curve on each segment, against a piano keyboard, snapping to notes and to the tempo grid.
A 4-band EQ you drag directly on the display, with frequencies that snap to notes.
The high-pass and low-pass filters run in double precision, are fully transparent, and reach all the way down to 3 Hz (12 or 24 dB/oct, with resonance). Because they sit before the final envelope, filtered kick sweeps stay 100% phase-locked. Until now you could design the perfect kick, filter it for a breakdown, and watch the phase push back and smear over the end. With DaKick, all your kick filtering happens inside the plugin, before the final envelope.
Amp, output and limiter
Shape the volume with a 16-point amp envelope with curves, and an adjustable end fade so the tail never clicks.
Peak normalize makes every kick peak exactly at your output level, and the optional zero-latency brickwall limiter never goes above 0 dBFS. When it’s off, the output is untouched.
Hear the kicks
Kick examples exported from DaKick are coming soon.
Presets and workflow
Built for producing, not just sound design.
11 factory kicks
Including CPU’s own kicks: CPU 808 Sub, CPU Kick G-Spot, CPU Kick Psy F, CPU Tek 1, CPU Tek House 1 and Old Goa. A bigger library is planned.
Your own folders
Create folders like Psy, Full On or Hard Tech, drag kicks between them, and reorder them. They are real folders on disk.
Key column
Every preset shows its key, typed in or detected from where the pitch curve ends, so you can pick a kick that fits the track.
Tempo-locked length
Set the length in milliseconds, or lock it to the tempo from 1/32 to 1/1 so the kick follows the song’s BPM.
One-click WAV export
Export the kick as a 24-bit WAV with everything included, filters and limiter too.
Keytracking and velocity
Play the kick in key across the keyboard from a root note, with velocity sensitivity.
Snap and zoom
Snap to notes and to the tempo grid. Zoom with a trackpad pinch, Cmd + wheel, or by dragging the time ruler.
Preview card
See a sketch of each kick and its facts (length, pitch sweep, key, wavetable) before you load it.
35 automatable parameters
A resizable window in the PSYPROD colours, with an (i) help button on every tab.
Specs
- Double-precision HP / LP filters down to 3 Hz
- macOS: Audio Unit and VST3, Apple Silicon and Intel (universal), macOS 11 or later
- Windows: VST3
- Mono output · 24-bit WAV export
- 16 built-in wavetables · Serum / Vital wavetable import
- 11 factory kicks · 35 automatable parameters
The private beta
DaKick is in private beta for testing and debugging. Places are limited and I review every application personally.
- Apply with the form below and share a link to your music.
- If you’re selected, you receive the beta download by email.
- Test DaKick in real projects and send bugs and feedback.
- At release in 2027, the 20–30 testers who take part receive a free DaKick licence.
Apply for the DaKick beta
Tell me a little about you and your music.