Best electric bass? Trilogy vs. Yellow Tools 'Majestic'?

[halcyo]

Ok, been asking around on the bigbluelounge.com forums about electric bass sample libraries. I've pretty much narrowed the candidates down to Spectrasonics 'Trilogy' and Yellow Tools 'Majestic'.
Trilogy seems to offer a wider range of sounds (including more acoustic bass and synth bass stuff) but it has a MUCH smaller library size, which kind of scares me, since I am looking for as REALISTIC as possible. Majestic, on the other hand, seems to sound awesome (though quite a bit less varied than Trilogy), but you don't hear too much about it. I wonder if it's a flawed product somehow, or if Yellow Tools just doesn't have a marketing department that's worth a shit.
Anyone have any comments/suggestions in terms of a software bass instrument? I have other synths (hardware and software) so synth bass is not really that big of a deal to me. Quality, CONVINCINGLY REALISTIC electric bass is what I'm lookin' for...

Thanks guys...

halcyo

[mOjO FET]

Trilogy is quite nice.
I dont know Majestic exept for that demonstration video in which the guy had a strong german accent.

Trilogy comes on 5 cds that's over four GB of data (and a 20 min install ).
I think Majestic is two dvds BUT quality goes over quantity.

Trilogy might lack the higher frequencies but it sits nice in the mix with all that warm and natural sound instead.

Everytime I need a bass I seem to go for trilogy; quick and easy.

If you want to play your bass on a keyboard or programm it Trilogy is realistic enough. It even does fret noise and stuff like that on random so you might think it's a real bass player.

Michael

[azwun25]

+1 for Trilogy although i've never used Majestic. I did use Culture once and it was pretty cool.

[The MPCist]

Triology here if I need it done MIDI but mostly if it's gotta sound real, I just reach for a bass.... nothing beats that

[halcyo]

It's really weird how NO ONE has even tried Majestic. I haven't heard one bad comment about their product, but I think that's because I've only heard from one guy who uses it, and says he owns Trilogy as well, and favors Majestic. Damn, this sucks. I want to try 'em both bad. I guess I'll just have to take it up the ass and maybe second hand the one I don't like as much. I'm guessing they are both great products soundwise. Everyone has highly recommended Trilogy, but I like the specs and audio demos of Majestic better, so what's a guy to do?

Anyone else?

halcyo

[steff3]

I have the Yellow Tools pure basses Vol2 lib for exs. The library is pre Majestic - but the sound is great. I think over that Majestic offers alternations for notes and also different speaker setups. And it comes with an updright bass.

I also have Independence and there is a part of upright bass and it really sounds great. I think soundwise YT samples are great - I mean look at Kontakt 1 library (in basses, guitars and percussions), Battery Studio Drums or (I think) exs content - they all include YT samples. If you are a Mac user and load the Garageband/exs upright bass/clean guitar - according to the naming 'YT.....' this should be yellow tools - may be a pretty stripped down version of the upright in Majestics.

I think Majestic is 16 GB - 2 for the acoustic basses and 14 for the electric - but be aware that the electric basses are always sampled with 4 different speaker/amp setups or so.
They say that an update is pretty much to come for Majestic with new articulations. I also think the Majestic as Independence Instrument is a great plus - I do not have Majestic (although at one point I definitely want to get it) - but Culture and pretty much only use it in Independence. Also check the YT forum .....

Also be aware that YT uses a dongle .... if you do not like dongles, it might be ....
(I had no problems with the dongle in mac until now)

I am a quite happy YT (Culture and Independence) user - I only saw a demo of trilogy when it was still in beta at a local music store and it sounds great - I also like the roland sound a lot and Spectrum is definitely one of the makers of that, too. But for my taste the mix up between synth basses and real basses does not appeal.

hope that helps

[mOjO FET]

I just remembered that I also have the pure basses with Warwick streamer and fender librarys. I find they are quite good which I assume will be the same quality standard with Majestic.

Can you listen to demos on the yellow tools site?
Maybe someone on their forum can provide with one.


Just found one:http://www.yellowtools.com/cp21/cms/index.php?id=56

hope it works.

Michael

[Yiannis]

I have trilogy,but the basses are too bassy for my taste without much in mid range.

The Upright bass is killer.

For my tracks Scarbee slap & finger does the job

[PhonoquO]

I've never been thoroughly happy with bass vsti's and sample libraries. It is very difficult to capture the feel of real bass guitar.

[amrz]

Have you tryed EW Hardcore Bass XP ?

[dickiefunk]

The best bass sounds to my ears are the scarbee j slap n fingered samples. I used to use trilogy but since scarbee out trilogy bit the dust! You might also want to consider broomstick bass!!!

[halcyo]

I might be making a mistake by disregarding OVERWHELMING recommendations for Trilogy, but right now, I really think that Majestic seems like a better fit for somebody who only really wants ELECTRIC BASS sounds. It really seems to have a better tone and realism. It seems like it has more 'finished' patches, already eq'd, compressed, etc. I know it's going to kill me if I don't just get both and find out which one is better (for me anyway!)

This probably sounds insane, but it just scares me that no one has ANYTHING significantly BAD to say about Trilogy. 'It just ain't natural!' It scares me that Trilogy basically has NO competition in terms of popularity, and it's hard for me to believe that people are basing their opinions about it on anything other than the fact that it is basically the only 'popular option'.

Ok, so that DOES sound pretty paranoid, huh?! Somebody save me! I can't afford to buy both right now, and I am coming close to the edge of the cliff, ready to jump into Majestic! Will I regret this choice?

halcyo

[Igotsoul4u]

sounds paranoid to me!!!

Seriously though, trilogy is one of the best soft synth purchases I have made. The electric and upright basses sound incredible. The one aspect that nobody has mentioned about trilogy is the sound editing capability. You can really do some cool stuff with the A & B mixer blending different sounds together to make some new ones. Also, the price just dropped so it should be a no brainer at this point. It should also be noted that I've been playing both upright and electric bass for 12 years. I love trilogy and so should you. Cmon...everybody's doin it.

[mtrepani]

Originally Posted by halcyo

I might be making a mistake by disregarding OVERWHELMING recommendations for Trilogy, but right now, I really think that Majestic seems like a better fit for somebody who only really wants ELECTRIC BASS sounds. It really seems to have a better tone and realism. It seems like it has more 'finished' patches, already eq'd, compressed, etc. I know it's going to kill me if I don't just get both and find out which one is better (for me anyway!)

This probably sounds insane, but it just scares me that no one has ANYTHING significantly BAD to say about Trilogy. 'It just ain't natural!' It scares me that Trilogy basically has NO competition in terms of popularity, and it's hard for me to believe that people are basing their opinions about it on anything other than the fact that it is basically the only 'popular option'.

Ok, so that DOES sound pretty paranoid, huh?! Somebody save me! I can't afford to buy both right now, and I am coming close to the edge of the cliff, ready to jump into Majestic! Will I regret this choice?

halcyo

I have to say that I love Trilogy. It just makes it easy to program a decent bass line, with a sound that will sit relatively well in a mix. BUT...

All the electric patches from Trilogy are heavily compressed. Depending on the music you do, it may or not benefit you. The acoustic bass has a bit more transients to its notes, but you can still feel some compression, depending on the velocity you hit.

On the other hand, you have Majestic, which doesn't give you has many bass flavours as far as instruments type, but you get the same patches in an "American" amp, a "British" amp, and a DI output format. I find that using the DI output, and "reamping" the signal, using plugins like IK Multimedia's Ampeg SVX, you can get quite a nice variety of tones that you can then mix with the DI track, compress and EQ to taste. YMMV


Cheers,

Martin

[halcyo]

...so no-one has direct experience w/ Majestic!? Jeez....that helps

thanks for all the replies, anyone else?



halcyo

[Animus]

I've used them all but always end up using Hardcore Bass with the expansion. WIth the expansion you can mix between DI and miced amp. THe other two libraries are a little too lackluster IMO comparatively.

[halcyo]

Originally Posted by Animus

I've used them all but always end up using Hardcore Bass with the expansion. WIth the expansion you can mix between DI and miced amp. THe other two libraries are a little too lackluster IMO comparatively.

Whoa! A Third opinion! I had all but eliminated Hardcore Bass XP from the running, as it seems like more of a 'fx bass' as pretty much all of the audio demos were fairly edgy to breakin' up distortion - more of a dirty sound. Does it do nicer cleaner tones as well?

What really surprises me is that the products that seem to go deepest into recreating exclusively electric bass are less popular. Sure maybe Majestic and Hardcore Bass XP aren't as 'pick up and play' or easy to program, but I can't imagine that you wouldn't get MORE REALISTIC results with these two, with proper programming. I know someone mentioned 'quality over quantity' referring to the fact that Trilogy has less samples, but still sounds great. But to me, Trilogy seems like the 'quantity' in the equation, as it attempts to do so many different sounds in such a small sample footprint.

halcyo

[vandertone]

I for one still prefer the SampleCD Bass Legends with Abe Laboriel and Marcus Miller which I use as EXS24 Instrument and put the bass-loops in Melodyne so I can combine samples with real-phrases.
I find the samples more tastefull then the electric bass department in Trilogy but
that might be my preference for smoother tones.
The upright in Trilogy like mentioned before is amazing.
But.........



......my 70ies Musicman-Stingray also sounds ok
Cheers,
Mirko

[Dr.Wu]

For ultrarealistic stuff i would suggest the Scarbee Bass and the Chris Hein Bass.
They bth sound killer but take a while to learn all the keyswitches.
Check the demos at the websites
www.scarbee.com
http://www.chrishein.net/index.htm

Trilogy is a very good allaround module with lots of choices and great sound quality.
Most of the time it will be exactly the right thing for the job.

Majestic has a couple of cool sounds but the fretless for example is nothing to write home about.
Trilogys fretless basses wipe the floor with it.

[halcyo]

Unfortunately, right now, my budget doesn't really include room for an external sampler like Kontakt 2, so I gotta go with an 'all in one' software/samples solution like Trilogy, Majestic, or Hardcore Bass XP.

Funny that you guys say here that the Trilogy fretless is better, I have heard others say that the Trilogy fretless is fairly fakey. I thought the fretless demo from Majestic sounded much better than the Trilogy fretless demos. I guess it's just different strokes for different folks, ya know?


halcyo

[mOjO FET]

Just looked at the contents of Majestic.

http://www.yellowtools.us/cp21/cms/index.php?id=353

I must say it seems like they have more options than trilogy does just for tha fact that you have d.i. bass it is probably worth buying it alone for that.

I'm kind of interested myself right now.

The price is about the same for both. I guess if I were you I'd get majestic.

Also, I find the trilogy fretless a little thin. But for the rest it's a good quick to go thing.

Have you listened to the demos yet?

Michael

[Dr.Wu]

all of the Trilogy basses are recorded DI to provide maximum flexibility and theres 4 different fretlessbasses in it that range from funky jacostyle to big and warm ballad tones.
as someone mentioned before one big advantage of Trilogy is the fact that its deadeasy to layer two basses and filter each layer seperately to create your own unique bass sounds.
Especially the combi of a nice picked bass and a subwave from an SH-101 will provide a very fat bottom end with a distinctive attack.
listen to the demosongs at www.spectrasonics.net to get an idea what Trilogy can do.

The only problem with Trilogy at the moment is the fact that it will take a while before Spectrasonics has a UB version for Intel Macs.
If you are using a PC or a G5/G4- thats ok!

[halcyo]

Well folks, I went nuts...I ordered Majestic, Trilogy, AND Hardcore Bass XP. I will get alot of mileage out of all kinds of bass samples, and I felt they all offered slightly different strengths, all of which I am interested in. Not cheap, but shit, we're SLUTZ, aren't we?! I own quite a few drum sample libraries, so I suppose it doesn't hurt to have lots of options on bass too! My problem has always been that I like so many flavors of sounds/genres/production styles that it is always hard for me to find a SINGLE product that is a perfect fit.

I suppose if I find one or two of the three to be useless to me, I will just take a bit of a loss and sell 'em second hand for a pretty good deal.

And, just for everyones enjoyment, once I get the shipment, I will spend a couple of days checking them out, and I will write some personal reviews about what's blowin' my mind, and what sucks, about each one.

thanks everyone for the help, and thanks for forcing me to spend WAY to much ****ing money on bass sounds! (bastards... )


halcyo

[jtholtz]

I'd be interested in hearing your experiences!

I had a Powerbook G4, but quickly upgraded to a MBP (wife's Xmas present, who could say no?)

Anyways, I can get some amazing drums sounds...but this bass thing, in UB, this is the problem.

I'm about to look for Majestic, but that IS a lot of disc space for just bass, as I have the Zero G loop packs and some other stuff coming, and I'm currently running everything on the internal drive. I'd like to keep everything self-contained, so I can take the computer anywhere and have a "one box" solution. The whole idea of mac is simplicity and elegance, right? That's the main reason I don't want to order Trilogy--Atmosphere is up and running on the PB, but I don't want the work-around, I just want it all to pop up in the DAW. I want to make music more than engineer.

Anyhow, look forward to your findings.

[halcyo]

Ok, I have since recieved my shipment, and have been messing around with ALL THREE plugins (Trilogy, Majestic, and Hardcore Bass XP) for almost a week now.

Despite its rave reviews all over the internet, I am strangely fairly delighted that Trilogy is definitley 3RD place for ELECTRIC BASS. I had a bad feeling that its smaller (of the three products) sample library wouldn't be able to produce convincingly realistic electric bass parts, and I was right. The overall tone/sound is good, but the overall flavor was kind of generic. Lots of the synth basses are nice, but I'm just not sure that they will be as 'production ready', as many are just REALLY wild and huge...almost too huge! I have lots of other synths that I use for synth bass, so I'm afraid this instrument might be fairly useless to me ! This plugin DOES have an impressive amount of patches though, and it was probably the easiest overall to use, and now it makes sense why it is the most popular! (plus Spectrasonics is a great company with a very good marketing department ) But I daresay that it is the least powerful of these three products.

Yellow Tools 'Majestic' was a big step up from Trilogy in terms of e-basses. This plugin, despite being the 'least popular', is the overall winner for sure. Lots of real nice tones, from rock to hip hop to jazz, and everything in between. Each bass was run through the same different amp setups, and there is also straight up DI tone, as well as tons of what Yellow Tools calls 'Warm' patches, which are pre-processed/eq'd/mixed to work in almost any genre that electric bass might be used in. For basic Rock, Pop, RnB, Hip Hop, Raggae, Country, Latin, and Funk productions, this plugin is outstanding. The interface is great, and thankfully devoid of LFO's and Filter controls (which don't make much sense with electric bass) and instead has many many unique controls that allow for very realistic bass part programming. Great product, killer sound, but for some reason Yellow Tools seems to have alot of trouble promoting their products, which is a shame, because this thing is sweet.

Hardcore Bass XP was the biggest surprise out of the bunch. I got it on audiomidi.com for the ridiculously low price of around $160, and this thing is VERY interesting. Though the sound palette is kind of limited (lots of 'aggressive' tones), I can admit that this is probably the MOST realistic sounding plugin of the three. Unlike Majestic, which is big and clear, Hardcore Bass XP can be dirty, growly, and downright shitty (in a good way!). There is nothing clinical about this plugin, which is why it might be the closest simulation to human playing. At first I was a little confused about how to setup a multi patch to make use of the MANY articulations and techniques. Once I figured out how to program downstrokes, upstrokes, legatos, mutes, staccatos, ghost notes, slides, etc, I was getting some STRIKINGLY real bass parts. If you get in there and edit your midi sequences tediously enough, I swear you can SOLO this thing and it sounds pretty damn real. This plugin did the best job at also emulating the IMPERFECTIONS of real e-bass playing. For heavy rock, alternative, and other driving bass lines, this instrument is an absolute joy. My ONLY complaint is that there is not enough variety. If the producers of this library were to use the same production principles for more Pop/Rnb/mainstream genre sounds as well, it would be simply stunning. Mostly rock/pushing overdrive kinds of sounds, which is probably why they call it Hardcore Bass! There are also some sounds and instruments included that I thought sounded almost TOO real and crappy, which kind of defeated the point of using a sample library vs. a terribly recorded real bass guitar.

So to sum up, I probably could have saved myself $300 and skipped Trilogy. Decent plugin for someone looking for the MOST sounds, even if it means sacrificing some realistic qualities. Majestic does everything Trilogy does in the electric bass department, but better (even the upright bass stuff for that matter). The only part of the equation that Trilogy covers beyond Majestic is in synth bass sounds, but I feel like a couple of hardware VA synths and assorted plugin synths might do a better job in that department anyway. Majestic will be perfect for my Pop/Rock/Rnb/Hip Hop productions, and when I feel like kickin' a little more ass, Hardcore Bass XP really hits the spot for me. Anyone considering any of these plugins should REALLY check out Majestic...very good indeed.


halcyo

[halcyo]

nobody appreciates my little review?







damn guys, that hurts.....




halcyo

[steff3]

thanks for you opinions - I think for Hardcore Bass there is an extension ..... (but maybe more of the same - more articulations)

Majestic Independence Player might have some cab modules etc. that might help trashing it :-)

best

[thenoodle]

No, I don't appreciate your review. As a user of Trilogy and Majestic over the past few years, my clients always love Majestic the best. They never know what it is. I was hoping to keep that info to myself.

[Spectacle]

Great review! I've followed your back-and-forth on this both here and at the Big Blue. I'm very glad to hear that Majestic was the right choice, as I'm looking to make a purchase, and it sounds like Majestic covers precisely what I need, and I have an Intel Mac and don't want to hurry up and wait for Trilogy in UB.



Much love, my friend, much love.

[halcyo]

I'm glad my trials and tribulations could help someone out...If you are looking for ELECTRIC BASS, then I feel that there is no way anybody who's actually used both products would pick Trilogy over Majestic, seriously. Again, perhaps the argument that Trilogy has all those synth bass and upright sounds as well is valid, but honestly, the Upright in Majestic is very good too...different than Trilogy's, but arguably more realistic.


Oh, and Steff3, I got the Hardcore Bass expansion pack (that's the 'XP' part actually) also, and it doesnt really take the product in any major new directions unfortunately. But for dirty, rockin' ass basslines (especially stuff that is sort of a Tool/Chris Squire/Kings X vibe, but different), it is $150 well spent...


halcyo