Hope you're all are doing great

I'm searching for a realistic and great sounding electric bass VI.

I've been using Modo Bass so far and I think it's marvelous in many aspects. However, the lack of fret noises (and general bass noises), tapping articulations and the ability to automate further parameters such as slide range makes me want for more.

I'm interested in your recommendations. What do you believe to be some of the most detailed e bass libraries? Any recommendation of VI is welcomed!


With nothing else to say, wish you a wonderful day

 

Spectrasonics Trilian is great and has added instruments like Chapman Stick which is equally excellent. I also like NI Session Bassist [KONTAKT] and NI Upright Bass [KONTAKT]. All really excellent well rounded libraries.

 

If you want that modern sterile sound often directed towards rock and metal then pretty much anything by Submission Audio.
Their Umanski library is probably a good bass when you want to get the middle ground. For a more modern metal sound go for Eurobass III.

Session Bassist Prime Bass and EZbass are also worth checking out, especially for pop production

 

Edit, never mind

 

Ample Sound make good bass libraries, check them out

 

They look great but I'm afraid they don't have fret noises. Don't think is very important for metal anyways, is it?


This might sound cliché, but I actually want those fret noises


Mainly because that's what I can't get with Modo Bass

 

Yeah, ample sound basses sound some how promising. How good is their 5 strings bass?

 

Trillian is mentioned a lot...

But, the important thing


Does it have fret noises?

 

Modo Bass 2 is also nice. It's on sale for $50 at Sweetwater (maybe elsewhere too) until 07/31, down from $200 normally.

 

Yeah, that's exactly I said in the post...

I'm searching another bass VST that could fill the gaps Modo Bass has.

 

Ample basses are good because of the automatic release noise, which is the sound produced when the left hand stops pressing the strings. That adds much realism. Fret noise i.e. the sound of fingers sliding over different frets in order to change chord positions etc. can also be produced in such automatic fashion, but in this case the engine is not as intelligent, for sometimes a very short distance will be run by the fingers, and yet the noise will still be produced, in cases that wouldn't make much sense. So, because of that, I'd advise programming these sliding fret noises case by case, when it were indeed meaningful to do so. However, for that end you could very well just keep using MODO along a fret noise sample pack, which you could produce yourself.

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2024

Not to be pedantic, but it is not what you said in the post. There was a lot added between V2 from V1. There is no public Mac release of v2, only Windows v 2.0.2. It's why I mentioned the sale price of v2.

 

My favourite is Impact Soundworks - Abyss but I'm biased towards that one because I just prefer Shreddage guitars series workflow over any other virtual guitars/basses I've tried, and I have a 6 string bass in real life that I enjoy playing a lot, even though I'm quite terrible at it.

Ample Sound has really good basses too. My top 3 are Fodera Yin Yang, Fender Precision and Fender Jazz. Really good sound and really easy to get nice performance out of them. I think most of their basses come with both finger and plectrum samples. My only complaint is that you cannot automate fret position with a parameter in DAW, like you can in Impact Soundworks or Orange Tree guitars for example, and if you want a line to be played a certain way you have to use Forced String keyswitches, which in my opinion takes longer to draw in for every note compared to just quickly drawing automation lines.

Fairly recent discovery for me that I quite like are Submission Audio basses. I haven't had much time to experiment with them but I really like the sound of Nocturnal Bass and Shinz Bass, not impressed at all by Umansky Bass, doesn't sound good in my opinion. I would say out of all of bass guitar VSTs I've tried Submission Audio are aimed the most at plug and play and ease of use, ie you can just draw in all the midi notes on the grid and at the same velocity and it would produce the better results (compared to competition) since it has built in timing and velocity randomization. They seem to work great for heavier genres like rock and metal but I'm not sure yet if you can use them for other lighter genres or would they sound too aggressive for those.

I like Ample Sound's Music Man StingRay 5. It sounds decent, has both finger and plectrum samples and is quite easy to use. But If you want 5 string StingRay specifically, I think you cannot beat Prominy SR5 in terms of sound. It is very deeply sampled bass and I think one of the best sounding on the market, but also one of the most complicated ones, you will need to read the manual and tweak it a lot to get a really good results.

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2024

CC would be nicer indeed. Should be reasonably easy to turn into a plugin in Reaper JSFX. Why Force String though? Fret position is set with "CapoMan" (ignore the name) followed by a note for the fret number I think. Should be G#1 followed by a note from B1 to E3 for Ample Ray5.

I think it's pretty great if you want a heavy rock/metal bass played with a pick. The finger library is usable too, but probably not as live-playable, because of how tightly packed the articulations are in terms of velocity.

 

It does.

 

"Fl studio Boobass, the best plugin for bass, a must have in collection"

 

That's a good advice! Thanks.

Ok, I'll check it out! Thank you for taking your time for answering. So great options right there as you mentioned.

 

That's why they have a built in programming tool called Riffer. Of course, it has a learning curve, but in one day you will be programming lines with more ease and precision than with any piano roll method.

 

Riffer and other similar tools are nice but unfortunately this type of workflow is never going to work for me. I need everything in piano roll (or in DAW automation lanes) so I can switch between instruments (or stack them) without having to rewrite all midi notes, and so I can export midi and then convert it to guitar tabs or sheet music.

 

At some point they changed Riffer so that you can just do your stuff in it and get a perfect MIDI clip whenever you decide to drag your riff out to your DAW.