Bassline Synth - Your favourite?

Speakafreaka

Speakafreaka

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I'm just interested to know what everyone likes to use for bass lines.

After much experimentation, I've decided that remarkably few synths make good bass noises for Psy.

I find that I can't get on with the envelopes/filter sound/dodgy fine tuning/distortion on nearly all of the synths I use... even ones supposedly 'great' for bass sounds. There are exceptions however.

Here is my little list of bass goodness (excluding 303 clones 'coz that is too easy) :

Triangle II - Great hard drive button, and very controlable sub osc. Intuitive tuning plus sync too. The fiters and envelope shapes are very well set up for these sorts of sounds as well

Absynth 2 - The waveshaper gives great distortion possiblities. Very customisable envelope shapes as well

Ummmm.........

Well I'm out! I've got Pro 53 but that sucks, and various Reaktor 4 modules, but they suck. Imposcar was good, but then the demo expired. Anyone got any ideas?
 
albino worth a shot m8,i had some fat ass basses from it :Wink3:

also novation v station is nice too use,

its all in the eq and compression really i belive

any goodish vsti with good eq compression sorted!!

a lot of pro psy producers have got good bass sounds from stienbergs VB-1 belive it or not, try whacking a plug like waves max bass on the output, along wiht eq compression. good luck ....
and make it groove :bananada:
 
System error said:
a lot of pro psy producers have got good bass sounds from stienbergs VB-1 belive it or not, try whacking a plug like waves max bass on the output, along wiht eq compression. good luck ....
and make it groove :bananada:
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Ick! No, No, No, No!

Personal opinion only - too many fuckers have done it... if I hear an EQ'ed 'Synthi Bass' preset once more I'm going to scream! Plus, MaxxBass and Baxxpander only 'expand' bass frequencies that already exist*, of which VB-1 has always had f**k all.

*rant over - apologies*

I agree whole-heartedly with the V-Station though. Keep it down to one oscillator with a bit of filter and amp envelope, tweak the cutoff and resonance to suit and it's like a whack in the face with a half-brick in a sock.

Muon's Tau/II/Pro is the daddy of the 303-like VSTis in my (admittedly limited in knowledge) opinion. Tau Pro does a gorgeous fat sine wave too.

rgc's Triangle II (as Speaka mentioned) and Pentagon I are also spot-on. I remember Mr. OOOD in particular singing the praises of the latter.

If you're using Logic, ES-M's a fine little bass machine.

I guess the trick is to get the kick and bass sitting well with each other in the audio spectrum using judicious EQ - an analyzer can help you there. Personally speaking, I try to use as little compression as I can.

J.

* - A little of either in moderation won't hurt though. Again, watch your spectrum to see what it's doing... anything below around 50Hz is just sub-bass mud, cluttering up the mix.
 
anything below around 50Hz is just sub-bass mud
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Any tips for a good steep filter (24db+) coz i've tried to hi-pass my basses but never seem to get the cutoff i want. I've tested various ones using hipass and lopass to create a notch and when i analyze it it still spills into quite a big frequency range
 
I just knock it out at the master output stage with the TC Native Graphic EQ. (Edit : Frequencies < approx. 25Hz, that is)

This could be a very bad idea - in such things I always reserve the right to be wrong.

J.
 
i never heard of anyone doing that before... range of human hearing starts at about 20hz so it IS audible, if very indistinctly :Wink3: another thing to remember is, though indistinct it is likely to be adding a little something to the timbre of your piece :Smile3:

(i'm quite possibly wrong too tho..)
 
I'm not happy with my basses unless I get a nice strong fundamental at around 35 Hz. You need the right key , the right kick and the RIGHT sound for this to work, but when it does... :Grin: Rockin'.

Pentagon
Albino
Trilogy (sampled into Kontakt though, the attacks are rubbish for trance without modification)
 
Albino is really nice..
Not so sure about Novation Bass Station - I never manage to get the sound I want out of it.
I love the Tau Pro - the 36dB/Octave LPF is sweet. The only major drawback is its not velocity sensitive! Fine for big fat full-on basslines but pretty irritating if your trying to do something more funky. Why the hell have they limited the synth in this way???.. it seems stupid to copy the 303 even to the point of missing out blatantly useful features like this! OK - rant over...
 
Ichabod said:
Not so sure about Novation Bass Station - I never manage to get the sound I want out of it.
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Bass Station is an unknown quantity for me... I had an *ahem* 'evaluation' copy, which reset the filter to 12dB every time you restarted the sequencer. Tres annoying. The V-Station gives you more control, but eats slightly more CPU.

I love the Tau Pro - the 36dB/Octave LPF is sweet. The only major drawback is its not velocity sensitive! Fine for big fat full-on basslines but pretty irritating if your trying to do something more funky. Why the hell have they limited the synth in this way???.. it seems stupid to copy the 303 even to the point of missing out blatantly useful features like this!
Click to expand...

Didn't stop ReBirth from making a mint for Propellerheads, even though it copied *everything* that was crap about the original 303 along with that which was good.

Dave from Muon (in fact I think Dave pretty much *is* Muon) posts a fair bit on KvR, so you could always email and ask. My pet hate with the TauPro is the ridiculously long amp envelope release, again a faithful 303 carry-over. Having said that, I still love the synth, and for 25 quid it's an absolute stormer.

J.
 
Synapse Hydra not bad either if you use a single osc & turn off the distortion.
 
Might sound strange, but try recording your module bass's through a mic, you be glad you did...

The Tau Pro sounded phat from my mackie to my mic, mate. Mmmmmm

I've even jammed a mic up my arse!


















But for w(hole)y different reasons, granted.


:blink:
 
Got a novation bassstation but its been resigned to a midi controller cos its far outweighed by the SH101. Had a tb3030 clone (mam freebass) but the sound just turns up on everything from teeny bopper pop to housy stuff. Cant beat it for a fat sound though.
 
waldorf pulse when I can get all the knobs in the right place :Wink3:
 
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