D16 PunchBox 2 Review - A unique take on kick drum synthesis

Kicks Punching Well Above Their Weight

Get the kick right and half the track looks after itself. Get it wrong and no amount of bus compression will save you. D16's PunchBox has been one of the best answers to that problem for years, and PunchBox 2 is a proper update rather than a lick of paint: a wavetable engine, multi-stage envelopes, a reworked effects rack and real-time pitch detection.

This review covers PunchBox 2. If you're still on the original, everything below is what you'd be upgrading to.

Four Generators, One Kick

The idea hasn't changed: a good kick is built from layers, so PunchBox gives you four generators running in parallel. Three are sample-based layers for the supporting parts of the sound, the click, the top end, a bit of room or noise, each with its own tuning, panning, sample start and filtering. The fourth is the main Kick generator, which is where the body and the low end come from.

That main generator now runs in five modes: Sample, emulations of the 909, 808 and 606 kick circuits, and the new Wavetable mode. The drum machine models are what most people will reach for first. The 909 gives you the tight, punchy thud that sits on top of a techno groove, the 808 the long, round boom for house and hip hop, and the 606 something lighter and snappier. Wavetable is the one to try when you want something less obviously vintage. Pick a table, sweep the frame position with an envelope and you get kicks with movement in the tone, which suits harder techno and more synthetic electronic styles.

Multi-Stage Envelopes Change Everything

The biggest upgrade is the Advanced Editor. Instead of fixed envelopes, you draw multi-stage envelopes with your own nodes and curves for parameters across the layers, the Kick generator and the master. Pitch sweeps, tail length and how each layer fades are all shaped by hand, with a waveform preview showing what every layer is doing and how they add up.

It's the difference between choosing a kick and designing one. If you've ever spent an evening stacking three kick samples in your DAW and nudging them into phase, this is a much quicker way to get there.

An Effects Rack Built For Kicks

The FX rack is tuned for low-end work rather than being a generic set of effects. There's a Bitcrusher from the same lineage as D16's Decimort, Distortion, a Filter with a resonant mode and an SH-101 mode, and an EQ with a clean parametric mode and a Pultec-style Vintage mode. The first four can be rearranged through ten patchbay routings, and each generator has its own sends into the rack.

After that come the stages that keep a kick in check on a club system: Mono Bass, which folds everything below a set frequency into mono, a Limiter with auto make-up, and a Soft Clip after it to catch whatever's left. Real-time pitch detection tells you which note your kick is sitting on, so tuning it to the key of the track takes seconds rather than guesswork.

Factory Content

The library has grown a lot: 1,120 master presets, 243 kick presets, 1,506 samples and 66 wavetables, plus presets for the Bitcrusher and Distortion. The sample browser now docks alongside the interface, so you can audition samples and drop them straight into a layer. Finished kicks can be dragged out as audio files, and multi-output routing lets you process the layers separately in your DAW if you'd rather.

Who It Suits

PunchBox 2 is aimed squarely at techno, house, trance and any dance music where the kick carries the track. If you want a 909 thump with more weight behind it, or a modern layered kick you can tune to the key, it gets you there faster than building one by hand. If you only ever grab the odd kick sample and leave it at that, it's probably more than you need.

Key Features

• Four parallel generators: three sample layers plus a main Kick generator
• Kick generator modes: Sample, 909, 808, 606 and Wavetable
• Advanced Editor with multi-stage envelopes, predefined shapes and waveform preview
• Bitcrusher, Distortion, Filter (Resonant and SH-101) and EQ (Modern and Vintage)
• Ten patchbay routings for the effects
• Mono Bass, Limiter and Soft Clip output stages
• Real-time pitch detection
• 1,120 master presets, 243 kick presets, 1,506 samples, 66 wavetables
• Docked sample browser, creative randomiser, drag-and-drop audio export, multi-output routing

System Requirements

• macOS 10.13 to macOS 26, Intel and Apple Silicon
• Windows 7 or newer
• VST2, VST3, AU and AAX (needs a host, not a standalone app)
• 4GB RAM

Get PunchBox 2

D16 - PunchBox 2: kick designer layering samples, synth engines and a wavetable generator, with its own effects chain and drag-and-drop audio export

More Drums From D16

If the 909 and 808 kick models are what hooked you, D16 also do the whole machines.

D16 - Drumazon 2: the full TR-909, all 11 voices, with a mixer, effects buses and a proper sequencer

D16 - Nepheton 2: D16's TR-808, for when you want the whole kit and not just the boom