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Review of Bass Master – a 64 bit VST/AU synth dedicated to bass from Loopmasters

BM_Logo_Light@10x_preview

Introduction
Heavy, speaker-shaking tones are just a few clicks away with Bass Master. This synth is totally dedicated to bass, and it’s built on Loopmasters’ award-winning sonic history.

Whether you are making House, Techno, Drum and Bass, Trap, Hip Hop or other electronic music, Bass Master’s huge variety of source sounds provide the inspiration for a weighty, powerful bass tone.

Bass Master is available in 64bit VST/AU versions at the introductory price of £49.95 / €59.00 / $69.00 until 1st August 2018 (standard price: £69.95 / €85.00 / $99.00) from PluginBoutique.

In-Depth Review
In essence Bass Master is a 2 oscillator sample based synth with filter, filter LFO, 3 effects (distortion, reverb, chorus), a frequency booster and 3 parameter mod-wheel macro.

BM Full GUI_preview

The interface is clean and well designed, in fact they’ve designed it so well that you can start using Bass Master straight away without needing to read the manual. Don’t be fooled by this apparent simplicity though because it is incredibly versatile and has excellent sound quality.

gui_preset

The top section contains the preset load / save options. There are an impressive 350+ presets in a number of categories including simple, sub, modulated and percussive. These are an ideal starting point to explore what Bass Master can do and there are lots of great sounding, very usable presets.

GUI top

The sample based oscillators are located in the top left part of the display. The top layer has an ADSR envelope and a handy feature to change the starting point of the sample. There are 217 waveforms sampled from the best modern and vintage bass sources. The second layer is the sub-layer that has an A/R envelope, option to change octave and a direct out option.

The middle section has the mix control. It’s easy to overlook this but it can be used to shape and create some interesting results.

The right hand part of the display has the filter with 13 filter types, a mix of low pass, high pass, band pass and comb. There are the usual filter controls and an excellent pre-drive control. There’s a dedicated ADSR envelope and LFO modulation that has the usual shapes as well as the more unusual random and drift shapes.

gui bottom

The bottom left has play mode – legato or portamento with glide time and mod-wheel macro assignments.

The effects occupy the middle bottom of the display which also has a keyboard display. There are a number of different effect modes –
Distortion – desk, drive, fuzz, crush, dual;
Chorus – gentle, detune, widen, uber;
Reverb – bright, mid, dark.

The bottom right of the display has a cool frequency booster than can be applied to the bottom, mid and top parts of the signal to add crispness, body and bass. This section also has the master volume control.

Conclusion
I love the analogue vibe with a modern feel of Bass Master. Loopmasters have created a very well designed synth that is easy to learn and use but can produce a huge range of great sounds including subs, 80s synths, plucks, modulated sounds and many more. The included 350+ presets mean that you can start using Bass Master straight away and if you want to tweak them it’s a straightforward and very quick process – it takes less than two minutes to create your own patch from scratch.

I’ve created two songs embedded at the start of the review to highlight some of the sounds that Bass Master can produce, they’re somewhere between techno, house and rave. Bass Master is the only sound source apart from the drum and vocal loops.

Educe uses 4 instances of Bass Master, a drum loop and vocal loops processed with Ultrachannel, H3000 Factory, Blackhole, H949 Dual Harmoniser (Eventide); Cryogen (Glitchmachines).

Warp uses 4 instances of Bass Master and a drum loop processed with MuLab step sequencer, Octavox, Ultratap, H3000 Factory, Blackhole and Ultrachannel (Eventide).

Both songs arranged and recorded in MuLab 7; both songs mastered in MuLab 7 using Magnetite (Black Rooster Audio); Elevate (Newfangled Audio); Stage (Fiedler Audio).

Music Software Bundles from Pluginboutique.com