Bass Synthesis !

[BlackLotus]

hey guys , i was wondering if you could help me out ! I've been using massive for my bass synthesis and really over the sounds , i just seem to make the same sounding stuff , i still get good sounds out of it but im looking for more , i know a lot of the guys are using fm8 and ive tried using it and i can't seem to make a good full sound out of it , dont know what im doing wrong so im looking for some guidance ! Ive bought fm8 so i thought i may as well start using it .

if theres any other synths you guys could recommend for making wobbles it would be great

at the moment i've got Cubase 6 , Ableton live which i dont use , and Komplete 7 (FM8 , Massive , Reaktor 5 , Absynth , etc)

im happy with my drum programming and processing just cant seem to get the bass sounds right

anyway , appreciate any feedback !

Black Lotus

[GothamHero]

Ableton live which i dont use

This has to change. Ableton's Operator and Analog are fantastic synths, on par with the likes of Absynth, Massive, and FM8 -- I shit you not. Skrillex, Bassnectar, and the Glitch Mob can back me on this.

I was in the same boat as you for a while, all my Massive bass presets were all starting to sound alike. I shortly switched onto Sylenth1, as it was fantastic in making that generic House bass. I never looked back, it's a great synth. I don't know what kind of preference or style of music (not style of Dubstep) you make, but here are just some basic descriptions. Note, all these have an LFO setting so they can make wobble.

Sylenth1 - Very versatile in (but not limited to) bass creation. It is actually so well shaped in sound and appearance, Sylenth could pass for hardware. It is one of the best soft synths I've come across, I'm just a hobbist, but I really like this synth. But, like I said before, I don't know what style you're going for. Sylenth1, I must say, is really easy-mode when it comes to producing House. It just has this vibe that screams "this will be the next dance hit." If you know what I mean. Doesn't mean it's restrictive or limited, it can do a lot. But It is better suited for high energy dance music. As for wobbles, buy it now. This has the cleanest, filthiest, and most dynamic LFO parameters. You can get really creative as you have two parts to the overall sound and so many options for where to route the LFO to. LFO to velocity is hilarious.

Albino - Very dark and warm sound. The best synth for producing sound FX and it's great for producing Reese basses, as it's able to achieve really dark sounds while still maintaining quality. The only problem I have with Albino is it doesn't really shine in terms of distinctive sound. I can listen to a track and say, "well, that sounds like it was made in Massive." you don't really get that with Albino. It's more of a filler synth. If you're into complex, layered sounds, then Albino will come in use to introduce a breath of fresh air into your bass. It's a good contrast and glue. Rusko uses this, enough said. Great wobble machine, very lovely, smooth sound.

FM8 - My bread & butter. Looks hard at a first glance, it really isn't. After a lot of research, reading, and testing, you will fall in love with FM8. Its so straight forward, easy, and the sound is excellent. Can produce a range of sounds from pads, leads, and bass -- everything sounds well polished and fantastic. It is as powerful as Massive, if not more. In my opinion, it produces better reese basses than Albino. Ah hell, it's the best FM synth in my opinion: 32 waveforms, open ended algorithms, the morph square, filters and effects, quality synth. Absynth shouldn't be looked down on either, it has unlimited waveforms and sounds you can only create using Absynth -- remember I was talking about distinctive sounds. Both very unique in sound. This has a, dare I say, unique wobble sound. It really does.

MiniMoog / Minimonsta / Moog Modular - If you want to create an authentic Moog bass in a short space of time, look no further. The filters are amazing. MiniMoog V is said to have more bass. But you they're all in their own league. If you're interested, feel free to search YouTube for a sample of what they can do. LFO is a huge niche on Moog emulators. Before, on the original hardware, to use an LFO you would need to give up an Oscillator; however, now you don't have to. Like Sylenth1, there are a lot of possibilities as to where to route your LFO to.

Pro-53 - You can fill a lot of parts with Pro-53. The bass is good, pads are smooth and leads can cut. It has a fantastic oscillator sync sound too. Guarantee to replicate those old French House basslines. Ever heard a French House wobble bass? Well, try it and see what happens.

V-station - I've never tried to make Dubstep basslines with this, but it's easy to learn and pick up. Really quality sound, and great basses can be created with this. Really, really, really good for sub basses, so I'm inclined to believe it would work wonders on deep basslines. It is a bass machine, works well with Z3ta (Leads) and Vanguard (Mid-Bass). Every synth was made with a specialty in mind, and V-station was definitely made for basses.

Z3ta + - Extremely versatile, you have more than just a subtractive synth, you also have a 6 operator FM synth, and an additive synth as well, which opens a lot more versatility to your bass and sound.

Predator - Nothing bad can be said about Predator, it is a very versatile synth. It's fantastic for creating clean basses (no matter what Excision says ):<), I'm sure it can get gritty too, haha. It has a really fat sound, which is probably brought on by many its features. Excision loves this synth, I see why, it's great for basses.

I haven't ever used Zebra, Alchemy, or Nexus (lol), but I hear they are great and fill in their own little niche in your pallet of soft synths.

This is all opinion of course. Anyone can feel free to add, agree or disagree. In the end, it comes down to how dedicated you are and how much synth power you want/need and feel you can handle. If you want to get the job done quick and dirty, defintely try V-Station, Pro-53, or a Moog. because it these are great synths, but they are however limited. If you're looking for something more 'advanced' and 'professional' try your hands at Sylenth1, FM8, Albino, Predator, Zeta, and Mini Monsta. The only one that can really decide here is you though, so weigh those things and make a good decision. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what synth you use as it all gets resampled anyway, tehe. Happy engineering

Here is some more expert opinion, http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/ ... -262145/18
Also, google *synth name* KVR, or *synth name* vs. *synth name* KRV for some good analysis. YouTube too, and the manual!

[hasezwei]

FM8 - My bread & butter. Looks hard at a first glance, it really isn't. After a lot of research, reading, and testing, you will fall in love with FM8. Its so straight forward, easy, and the sound is excellent. Can produce a range of sounds from pads, leads, and bass -- everything sounds well polished and fantastic. It is as powerful as Massive, if not more. In my opinion, it produces better reese basses than Albino. Ah hell, it's the best FM synth in my opinion: 32 waveforms, open ended algorithms, the morph square, filters and effects, quality synth.

that sounds quite amazing, care to make a tutorial or explanation on how to use fm8 for dance-music oriented sounds (reeses reeses reeses ) ?
just a very basic sound from which one can start experimenting (a reese a reese a reese!)

[Insahn]

You should be able to get a basic reese out of FM8 by modulating a couple of different carriers, feeding the carriers back into themselves, and slightly detuning both (Search Trifonic FM8 101 Tutorials if you don't know what carriers and modulators are). Making one of your carriers 0.5010 and the other 1.000 should sound pretty decent. After that go to the master tab, up the voices to something that sounds thick, and move the pan position around a bit. Add effects to taste. You will be able to see your waveforms changing from basic sine waves to saw-ish waves in the spectrum analyzer at the top of FM8. Of course, there is much more that you can do with it, but that should get you started as an extremely basic Reese sound.

[hasezwei]

You should be able to get a basic reese out of FM8 by modulating a couple of different carriers, feeding the carriers back into themselves, and slightly detuning both (Search Trifonic FM8 101 Tutorials if you don't know what carriers and modulators are). Making one of your carriers 0.5010 and the other 1.000 should sound pretty decent. After that go to the master tab, up the voices to something that sounds thick, and move the pan position around a bit. Add effects to taste. You will be able to see your waveforms changing from basic sine waves to saw-ish waves in the spectrum analyzer at the top of FM8. Of course, there is much more that you can do with it, but that should get you started as an extremely basic Reese sound.

thanks alot mate, gonna start working with that tomorrow

[Jacob15728]

I'd like to recommend Circle. It's basically the same thing as Massive except it has a few extra features that Massive doesn't. (It's also lacking a couple of things that Massive has but overall I think Circle is better). The GUI and modulation system is exactly the same as Massive.

Edit: I just noticed that Circle doesn't have a band stop filter. That's actually a pretty big weakness...

[Insahn]

You should be able to get a basic reese out of FM8 by modulating a couple of different carriers, feeding the carriers back into themselves, and slightly detuning both (Search Trifonic FM8 101 Tutorials if you don't know what carriers and modulators are). Making one of your carriers 0.5010 and the other 1.000 should sound pretty decent. After that go to the master tab, up the voices to something that sounds thick, and move the pan position around a bit. Add effects to taste. You will be able to see your waveforms changing from basic sine waves to saw-ish waves in the spectrum analyzer at the top of FM8. Of course, there is much more that you can do with it, but that should get you started as an extremely basic Reese sound.

thanks alot mate, gonna start working with that tomorrow

I forgot to mention that using the morph square can help you get some weird and twisty sounds as well.

[viberous]

In terms of dirty bass, I turn towards Blue. Its pretty underrated by many (imo), but once you learn it, it shells out some pretty unique patches. I'm sure other synths could do the same (fm8), just haven't used them. Also, if you're feeling extra creative you can always get reactor and design/make your own

[BlackLotus]

ye i've used most of the synths you;ve mentioned , guess ive got to just get into them , although i havent used Sylenth , sounds good.

a friend of mine is using ableton and operator and hes making some pretty cool sounds , i've deleted all my pirated software which is what i was using , so i got to earn some more money and purchase one of these synths and that will give me more motivation to get to learn to use them .

but in the mean time , i've seen the trifonic tutorials on fm8 and they're useful , i just get frustrated cause im not able to make the same sort of big sounds in fm8 , im sure im doing something wrong haha . i need to download the fm8 manual as it didnt come with komplete 7 , but i hate reading manuals on a computer screen , so i must get it printed somewhere.

ye i know most of the big guys are using fm8 , Predator i didnt really like the GUI in predator but im sure its making some good sounds.

i was using z3ta to make my reeses in my drum and bass songs , must get back into it .

i suppose i need to put more time into my synthesis , gonna go give some of those other synths a shot and see what happens

@viberous ye i've got reaktor and have tried making some synths , but very basic ones

thanks for the feedback tho
Appreciate it <3 !

[RandoRando]

FM8 is the shit, z3ta and absynth are pretty cool also but be prepared for some reading cause those UI's are kinda tricky.

[Teknicyde]

I make everything with atlantis... That vst pack will replace not only your synth but half your damn daw. And its free.

Straightforward, runs based around additive theory and simple modular routing systems, and its free. Doubles as a filterbank/compressor/limiter/multi-distortion/reverb/delay/phaser/flanger/noisegate/ect, n its free. Has an infinite number of waveforms, because you can use your own. Has wavetable support, just load a longer clip as a custom waveform and use the position mod. not limited by number of effects in synth like massive is, and its free. Has 9 hybrid oscs, making 3 additive oscs, making your final waveshape. All 9 can be detuned. Godsend for anything you need to make, strings, nasty midrange bass, n its free...

When people point at a sound in one of my tunes and ask what i made it with, I facepalm... there is only one answer for everything. Atlantis.

And did I mention its free? Its free.

(im not affiliated or paid off by jeremy evers to say this in every thread, its just true, though jeremy is an awesome dude with the tech support)

[BlackMath]

Alchemy is pretty amazing and you can import your own sounds... often times I will gather sounds from other synths or field recordings to make new sounds
it also has a morph matrix that you can customize to get really good evolving movement

[Jacob15728]

I make everything with atlantis... That vst pack will replace not only your synth but half your damn daw. And its free.

Straightforward, runs based around additive theory and simple modular routing systems, and its free. Doubles as a filterbank/compressor/limiter/multi-distortion/reverb/delay/phaser/flanger/noisegate/ect, n its free. Has an infinite number of waveforms, because you can use your own. Has wavetable support, just load a longer clip as a custom waveform and use the position mod. not limited by number of effects in synth like massive is, and its free. Has 9 hybrid oscs, making 3 additive oscs, making your final waveshape. All 9 can be detuned. Godsend for anything you need to make, strings, nasty midrange bass, n its free...

When people point at a sound in one of my tunes and ask what i made it with, I facepalm... there is only one answer for everything. Atlantis.

And did I mention its free? Its free.

(im not affiliated or paid off by jeremy evers to say this in every thread, its just true, though jeremy is an awesome dude with the tech support)

What? I downloaded Atlantis a few weeks ago, played around with it for a bit, decided it was a pile of shit and haven't touched it since. Maybe I should crack it open again and see if I have more luck this time.

[Dystinkt]

I like albino, the first synth i properly learned and my go to for bass sounds to this day, hated how massive sounds and dont own any other soft synths

[Teknicyde]

I make everything with atlantis... That vst pack will replace not only your synth but half your damn daw. And its free.

Straightforward, runs based around additive theory and simple modular routing systems, and its free. Doubles as a filterbank/compressor/limiter/multi-distortion/reverb/delay/phaser/flanger/noisegate/ect, n its free. Has an infinite number of waveforms, because you can use your own. Has wavetable support, just load a longer clip as a custom waveform and use the position mod. not limited by number of effects in synth like massive is, and its free. Has 9 hybrid oscs, making 3 additive oscs, making your final waveshape. All 9 can be detuned. Godsend for anything you need to make, strings, nasty midrange bass, n its free...

When people point at a sound in one of my tunes and ask what i made it with, I facepalm... there is only one answer for everything. Atlantis.

And did I mention its free? Its free.

(im not affiliated or paid off by jeremy evers to say this in every thread, its just true, though jeremy is an awesome dude with the tech support)

What? I downloaded Atlantis a few weeks ago, played around with it for a bit, decided it was a pile of shit and haven't touched it since. Maybe I should crack it open again and see if I have more luck this time.

You missed an amazing synth... 9 oscs additive with custom waveforms and a complex filterbank? Your brain said 'pile of shit' why? Because it didnt come with brutal electro presets?

[hasezwei]

I make everything with atlantis... That vst pack will replace not only your synth but half your damn daw. And its free.

Straightforward, runs based around additive theory and simple modular routing systems, and its free. Doubles as a filterbank/compressor/limiter/multi-distortion/reverb/delay/phaser/flanger/noisegate/ect, n its free. Has an infinite number of waveforms, because you can use your own. Has wavetable support, just load a longer clip as a custom waveform and use the position mod. not limited by number of effects in synth like massive is, and its free. Has 9 hybrid oscs, making 3 additive oscs, making your final waveshape. All 9 can be detuned. Godsend for anything you need to make, strings, nasty midrange bass, n its free...

When people point at a sound in one of my tunes and ask what i made it with, I facepalm... there is only one answer for everything. Atlantis.

And did I mention its free? Its free.

(im not affiliated or paid off by jeremy evers to say this in every thread, its just true, though jeremy is an awesome dude with the tech support)

What? I downloaded Atlantis a few weeks ago, played around with it for a bit, decided it was a pile of shit and haven't touched it since. Maybe I should crack it open again and see if I have more luck this time.

You missed an amazing synth... 9 oscs additive with custom waveforms and a complex filterbank? Your brain said 'pile of shit' why? Because it didnt come with brutal electro presets?

maybe because the user interface is horrible. after 5 minutes of trying to do anything useful with it i gave up and just clicked the random buttons and funnily that didn't even change the sound. now i'm sure theres great potential in that synth but an intuitive interface is important to many of us.

[Teknicyde]

The interface is simple as any other additive synth, what on earth didnt you like about it?

[Jacob15728]

I make everything with atlantis... That vst pack will replace not only your synth but half your damn daw. And its free.

Straightforward, runs based around additive theory and simple modular routing systems, and its free. Doubles as a filterbank/compressor/limiter/multi-distortion/reverb/delay/phaser/flanger/noisegate/ect, n its free. Has an infinite number of waveforms, because you can use your own. Has wavetable support, just load a longer clip as a custom waveform and use the position mod. not limited by number of effects in synth like massive is, and its free. Has 9 hybrid oscs, making 3 additive oscs, making your final waveshape. All 9 can be detuned. Godsend for anything you need to make, strings, nasty midrange bass, n its free...

When people point at a sound in one of my tunes and ask what i made it with, I facepalm... there is only one answer for everything. Atlantis.

And did I mention its free? Its free.

(im not affiliated or paid off by jeremy evers to say this in every thread, its just true, though jeremy is an awesome dude with the tech support)

What? I downloaded Atlantis a few weeks ago, played around with it for a bit, decided it was a pile of shit and haven't touched it since. Maybe I should crack it open again and see if I have more luck this time.

You missed an amazing synth... 9 oscs additive with custom waveforms and a complex filterbank? Your brain said 'pile of shit' why? Because it didnt come with brutal electro presets?

I've never used a preset in my life, actually. hasezwei got it right, the interface is hard to figure out. I didn't even realize it had 9 oscillators. Looking at it right now, I only see 3. Where are the rest of them? I can't figure out how to import custom waveforms. The waveforms it comes with all sound weak and don't have a nice punch to them (even compared to 3x osc or other simple synths). It makes a funny bleeping noise every time I play a note, even with all the modulation sources turned off. I'll admit the filters are awesome, but that's the only selling point. Maybe we have two different versions of Atlantis, maybe I'm just retarded. I don't know, but I can't get any decent sounds out of it, and I can get decent sounds out of any other synth from 3xosc to Albino to Massive.

[amphibian]

hey guys , i was wondering if you could help me out ! I've been using massive for my bass synthesis and really over the sounds , i just seem to make the same sounding stuff , i still get good sounds out of it but im looking for more , i know a lot of the guys are using fm8 and ive tried using it and i can't seem to make a good full sound out of it , dont know what im doing wrong so im looking for some guidance ! Ive bought fm8 so i thought i may as well start using it .

In all honesty - how long you been producing? I can guarantee you you haven't exhausted massive's sounds in basslines. Try different waveforms, different modulations.etc. and NEVER save a preset. Ever. That's a good way to lock yourself into one way of doing things (Bad!)

[BlackLotus]

in all honesty , i did not say i have exhausted the sounds of massive , i have exhausted myself with massive , and want to try something new and different , im still making new sounds in massive , today i made atleast 3 new bass sounds , but im not happy with the way they sound. i want something different , and i'm sure i've used every single oscillator in massive atleast once and listened to the full wavetable .

but you are so sure that i've been producing for a month or so ? don't come jump to your own conclusions . hate these people and their negative attitudes !

anyway , i have been fooling around with albino , and some weird synthesisors in reaktor , a little bit of tweaking with fm8 and got some icicle still phasing on the oscillators , just the midrange basses in fm8 that i produce are horrid

but i'll keep at it !