Anemic Drum Machines

[Invisible Man]

I would do all of the above (and have). Live sound, real-time effects, compression, lots of volume. Parallel blended, bit-crushed drums with a modulated eq compressed to shit and then blasted out of a bass amp? It might get you close.

Or just find a good drummer.

[echoraven]

Try duplicating the drum track and offsetting it by a fraction of a second and see how that sounds.

[kbit]

You do recall correctly, Justin mentioned they always recorded yhe drums out of speakers in a live room to make them sound less flat or whatever.

Maybe they used to do that? In this blerp on their blog, Justin said the PA method was the worst sounding for recording the drums:

http://www.austerityprogram.com/studio/ ... 040709.htm

Seems like he worked out the process better, this is from 2014

We are particular, though. The sound of a drum machine direct to tape leaves me a little cold. We always take care to include a clear presentation of the ambient sound—piping the drum machine back through our PA and capturing it with ridiculously expensive room mics.

http://m.noisey.vice.com/blog/the-auste ... -interview

[D.o.S.]

Could have been feeding lies to the gnats that read Vice ofc.

[Faldoe]

You do recall correctly, Justin mentioned they always recorded yhe drums out of speakers in a live room to make them sound less flat or whatever.

Maybe they used to do that? In this blerp on their blog, Justin said the PA method was the worst sounding for recording the drums:

http://www.austerityprogram.com/studio/ ... 040709.htm

Seems like he worked out the process better, this is from 2014

We are particular, though. The sound of a drum machine direct to tape leaves me a little cold. We always take care to include a clear presentation of the ambient sound—piping the drum machine back through our PA and capturing it with ridiculously expensive room mics.

http://m.noisey.vice.com/blog/the-auste ... -interview

Maybe he figured out a better way to do it, better mics, than before. If you listen to the audio on from the link I included the PA method doesn't sound good compared to the other methods.

[frodog]

I recorded the 'drums' from a casio rapman (which do not sound good) through a huge PA once for a track, and it definitely makes it sound bigger and more realistic. Otherwise, the tips mentioned before are on point; compression, overdrive, eq-ing, bitcrushing, run 'em through a bass amp... Some things I've done recently with drum machines when recording loops is run them through a Basic Audio Futureman on low-medium gain with the bass turned up and the treble cut, and/or a Skychord Truck Loud with the dark switch engaged, as a presence limiter. Both those seem to work well on digital drums. Plus reverb, maybe a dark delay... Those are just specific examples, I'm sure you can get good results with any number of OD/distortion pedals.