Steinberg Virtual Bassist VST PC

I've been writing and recording music for 25 years. I'm reviewing Virtual Bassist 1.0 and I use it with Cubase SX3 for bass parts ( I also still play a lot of bass using my Fender Precision). I'm running an Intel Pentium Dual Core with XP SP2 Home edition. I listen through high quality digital monitors.

The interface is intuitive and very straight forward. the installation was quick and problem free, the license registration onto the key went without a hitch. MIDI automation is very simple, you can use the piano roll below a certain octave to trigger different patterns... except the patterns don't always trigger once they have been edited to fit your drum groove using the Virtual Bassist Groove Match panel, to get around this problem I create a second Midi channel that just drives the edited patterns leaving the first MIDI channel to trigger the default patterns and fills, then I render them both (Export as Audio) as one audio file. I usually end up with an amazing bass line. The sounds are second to none. The manual is okay, I could add a lot more to make it easier to use.

Generally, you need to tweak very little as the samples are so superb. There aren't enough presets, but you can, using MIDI CC trigger a pattern that you have played yourself, only problem is that you have no more than ONE OCTAVE - COME ON, what was that all about? However, it is certainly expressive when the presets are used, and using your DAW's automation you can control dampening, pick up sound, attack, etc and with a little time invested you can really have a 'real' bassist in there.

I got it after it was discontinued by Steinberg, you can still pick up copies if you look around, so it was at a knock down price for me, so it's kind of worth the money, I paid ??109 (109 British Pounds) for it, it was originally tagged at around ??189. I chose this because there isn't much more out there, I demo-ed Broomstick Bass but that sounded robotic to me. If this tool could output a MIDI file in the way that Groove Agent 3 (and Broomstick Bass - but BB is a too expressionless) does I firmly believe that Virtual Bassist would become the virtual bass standard in computer recorded music, the lack of this functionality will almost certainly resign Virtual Bassist to history - and this would be a really great shame. This is a wasted opportunity if Steinberg don't follow this up. It has never crashed... yet.

Hello, I myself am a bassplayer for about 18 years now. Apart from playing music, I do lots of live-mixing. In the last few years more and more production and recordings (studio and live).
I have tried the Steinberg Virtual Bassist in combination with Virtual guitarist. This was one of those 'Try before buy' offers.
The 'try' part I did but it never made it to the buy part.

First of all: It's Steinberg... When we talk "ease of use" in combination with the brand. I must admit I have a bit of a reserved opinion. Steinberg makes nice tools and software when you get them even registered and working. But the ease of use of this product is (compared to competition plug-ins) a pain in the back side to say the least. Installation is fine, Registration process sucks.
...and as mentioned in one of the other reviews. The way the system is designed (with the octaves for key and style) require to rewrite your MIDI files only for this plug-in.

Allthow the ease of use and the engine itself are realy awfull. The sound quality is great! When I finaly managed to get it working in a kinda satisfactory way. I was blown away a bit by the sound quality of the samples. When heard dry, they allready sound ok. But if ran through a fat, full-tube beast of a bass-amp and recorded again with a mic?... It sounds incredible (finalized with some eq and compression).
Why a real bass-amp I hear you think? Well, I've tried the simulated ones in the plug-in. In regards the amps, cabs and dynamics of the software. I wasn't very impressed.

Just to recap: The sound of the Virtual bassist is very good. The bass-guitar samples sound pretty amazing in various styles.
The simulated amps and dynamics work but do not expect any wonders from em.
The engine is bad (to say the least). It is realy a pitty actualy that a plug-in sounding like this is completely ruined by the engine it's running on. Most anoying about it for me personal was: The bassguitar only supports 1 ocave. When you want it to play an E on one or two octave higher. It drops to the lowest note it can find by default.
Secondly; it is filled with pre-defined licks and parts that are nice. The agrovation begins when you wish it to play what you want. There is a single note option that will follow the MIDI in the file but it's limited making the plug-in almost useless.
It' more like a Ferrari in a traffic-jam. Looks good, sounds great but useless for the purpose intended.

(I've rated it a 2 here since the 1 sould go out to the Virtual Guitarist included in the package I glady returned. That is even wors)

15 years making music. Guitars, Keyboards, programming, composition.

I'm attempting to use this plug-in for varied styles of music, most important is it's emulation of traditional bass.

I'm using Logic on PC.

Interface is only intuitive in that there are few options on the primary panel so you can figure it all out in a few passes.

No problems with installation.

The sound quality is excellent. Expectations were met or exceeded and there were no headaches getting it to make a nice sound either. At least not for the preset styles of playing. When it comes to the user defining aspect of this software, it fails miserably, hence the 5 out of 10 for ease of use... more on that later.

The effects section is fantastic. Simple to use, logical, great sound quality and above all, fun.

Let's just say that in terms of quality, this plug-in is stellar. The sounds and styles are superb and highly usable.

The problem is that you can't actually use it as what it's advertised as... a virtual bass instrument. It has a vast selection of phrases that can be played in a variety of styles by using a combination of midi keyboard and expression wheel... But trying to play it as a virtual bass plug-in was very frustrating. At first there was no logical way to get it to do that... it would just start playing phrases on any press of a midi note on the keyboard. After combing the documentation I found out that different octaves of the keyboard could be used for either playing phrases or individual notes but the whole keyboard could not be used for either one OR the other! In fact, the section of the midi keyboard defined by the software to be played as a virtual bass plug-in was only (get this) ONE OCTAVE!

Then I found that by playing the plug-in through midi channel 16 instead of 1 or 2 you could use it strictly as a virtual bass plug-in... but again ONLY ONE OCTAVE?!

I felt like I was on crazy pills. Was the Steinberg product testing team just back from vacation in Amsterdam? Why would they limit the usablility of this great sounding software that way?

If Steinberg updates a future version to make it usable by any musician with half a creative tendon in their body, pick it up without delay, until then, vote with your wallet and let this software suck dust on the store shelf.

18 years of experience.Keyboards and guitars

It is very easy to install and extremely easy to use.Perhaps too easy, given that people who are interest of using such software are familiar with more complex ones.
First impression of it's sound is really good.

The sound quality is awesome.It trully sounds as everyone would have hoped for.It brings professional studio quality in home recording.A lot of parts, covering almost every kind of music an electric bass can play.It also has almost every bass related effect possible that can be applied to satisfy every mood.
You can use more that one VB at a time

Unfortunately the shock comes after having a bit fun with it.Although it's own parts sound really good with excellent quality, it's very dissapointing that in single note mode you can only use one octave!Adding the fact that it lacks the ability of altering the parts (no midi out)it makes it hopeless to use it as a bass replacement.It definitelly doesn't worth it's money, as it doesn't do the one an only thing that it's meant to do:Use it instead of a real bass
I can only recommend it for jamming

15 years of experience. Plays guitar.

This virtual instrument is pretty straight forward. Didn?t need the manual much.

Unfortunately the main impression disapoints big time! I was really hoping that it would be better than the Bornemark "Broomstick Bass", that I personaly think sucks!

Steinberg?s Virtual Bassist is better but still not very useful. Simply because it doesn?t has the GROOVE!!! It just doesn?t sounds real.

Was it worth it? NO

Thought it would be better than thye awful Bornemark Broomstick Bass. It is but still not good enough.

I don?t have a favourite feature for this plugin.

It?s not that CPU hungry.

No crashes, but then again I didn?t use it for very long.

Wishes? Nah, I don?t think they will ever create a good sounding bass plugin anaway. let?s just forget about it.