Arturia synth development.

[Aryaroman]

Oh, another thread descending into the never-ending, bottomless fighting pit of analog vs. digital debate.

I just wanna make some music.

[Ingonator]

Why do so many people use self-oscillation for the kick drum? Now that many synths have osc's with retrigger and phase control, the self-resonance way is more like a workaround in my view. Pulse wave with zero or just little resonance delivers punchier results.

Many analog synths and/or emulations do not contain a dedicated Sine waveform so the self-oscillation is used as a workaround to produce a Sine.
Besides that at self-oscillation the filter envelope acts as a pitch envelope as with pure self-oscilation (no Oscs used) the cutoff controls the pitch.

With synths that have a dedicated Sine wave you could get a similar result without using any resoanance but using a pitch envelope for the oscillator. Without having both a dedicated Sine and a pitch envelope it will be difficult to get a similar result to that possible with pure self-oscillation.

For example with my real analog Novation Bass Station II that has a Sine with both main Oscs and also the Sub-Osc I could easily get a similar result without using any Resonance. With both main Oscs you could use the filter envelope (called Mod envelope there) as a pitch envelope (dedicated pitch envelope amount knobs or each main Osc) to get a kick drum sound based on a Sine.
The "Classic" filter is resonant until self-oscillation (for the LPF, BPF and HPF modes) so you could get a comparable result based on self-oscillation too.

[fluffy_little_something]

But why the sine, it seems to work with all kinds of waveforms, not just sine.

[Cinebient]

But why the sine, it seems to work with all kinds of waveforms, not just sine.

...and noise.

[Ingonator]

But why the sine, it seems to work with all kinds of waveforms, not just sine.

Well, of course you could also use others but with the Sine you will get a specific result. For synth kick drums there is not just one single solution. With a low pass filter at a very low Cutoff most waveforms get closer to a Sine anyway as most harmonics are removed then (also depending on the slope and/or amount of poles of the filter). Anyway with e.g. a Sawtooth it seems to be more difficult to get a proper Kick drum. A Triangle seems to be a better workaround if no Sine is available. Anyway if possible using a Sine stilll seems to be a good option. Using multiple Sine oscillators could be interesting too.

Even more imporant seems to be to have a pitch envelope.