Chocolate Audio BBassV

A New Paradigm in Sampled Electric Basses

The BBassV Electric Bass comes after several years of R&D at our headquarters and we think it sets a new benchmark in terms of playability and sound.

This virtual instrument is derived from a Yamaha BB415 5-string electric bass, one of the few "non-classics" instruments which we find has tons of character.

The concept behind the BBassV is to make playing a bass line via a MIDI keyboard simple again. Gone are the days when we needed to learn by heart tons of keyswitches to craft a convincing track. With all of this left-brain data, we constantly run the risk of losing creativity and musicality in the process.

Three Main Articulations

The only three available keyswitches allow you to switch on the fly between Fingered (C0 via MIDI), Mute (D0), and Harmonics (E0).

Three Playing and Programming Styles

BBassV sports three main Playback behaviors: Poly, which gives you the chance to easily play polyphonic bass lines; Mono, where each note triggers full sustain samples with intelligent auto-fretting and Legato, which enables our advanced legato and slide engine.

Slide Engine

The Slide Engine is the door to the life-like slide-to articulation: just play on the MIDI keyboard with two consecutive notes spread more than 3 semitones and making the second overlap the first and the magic happens. This articulation works at any BPM and you can even switch between two different BPM-synced durations via Velocity. Pressing the Sustain Pedal will make, by default, all overlapping notes play.

Fretting

In 2006, Chocolate Audio designed the first Kontakt script to allow the first-ever user-managed virtual-fretting and position change on a sampled bass. This was the Mock Bass (now discontinued). Now, 9 years later, we're upping the ante with our own Intelligent Auto-Fretting technology.

Fretting is often overlooked, but it's one of the main reasons the same bass can sound very different when played by different players. And it goes a long way into making the BBassV even more life-like.

The Fret No. Knob when turned clockwise will enable one of 15 fretting algorithms we designed, derived from analyzing the fretting styles of different bass players.

Funk 1 - 2: most of the movement is across the neck (so, in position). Funk 2 moves a bit more along the neck.

Pop 1 - 2: the Pop players tend to move a bit more, especially when moving in close intervals to keep a consistent tone. Pop 2, again is more dynamic along the neck.

Jazz 1 - 2: the Jazz players are fond of the first position, but will easily move up on the neck when need to play larger intervals or to approach solo lines. Jazz 2 likes to move more.

Walking 1 - 2: Walking players will travel a lot along the neck when playing close intervals, and keep position when playing medium-distance intervals. Walking 2 is a mover.

Rock 1 - 2 - Lo: these players like to move a lot along the neck on lower strings to keep a fat and constant tone. Rock Lo tries to use the first 2/3 strings as much as it can.

8va 1 - 2 - Country - 5ths: these players are at home when you want those lines where you jump in octaves, fifths, and fourths.

Some of these players can also sense the beginning of a new bar and reset their position accordingly or you can reset the position at any time pressing C#0.

The fretting technique is the way a bass player moves their hand along and across the bass neck and how they select where to play notes which can be found in multiple places on the bass).

A Dynamic Quartet

The Dynamics Diagram and editor will allow to switch On and Off any of the 4 sampled Sustain Dynamics + Ghost notes and set the Velocity values switching between these.

No more losing control of an instrument a too-dynamic for the need of the moment or better emulate some playing styles where some dynamics are hardly ever touched (think heavy metal or jazz in regards to the piano or fortissimo dynamics).

Also, tune the response of any MIDI keyboard using the Velocity Curve knob.

EFX, Mics, and Cabinets

The EFX section has been tailored to the needs of the electric bass and made simpler and more effective (pun intended) at the same time. This is for quick and dirty tone-mangling, like the one a bass player would do with his own amps and pedals. Simple and powerful.

Compressor and Distortion pedals are followed by an Amp Emulator (use it to get crunchy!), the custom IR Cabinet section (see below), a 3-Band EQ explicitly fine-tuned for bass-heavy signals, a modulation section with a choice of Chorus, Phaser or Flanger and a Delay section (and yes... we chose not to have BPM sync to keep it old-style!).

The Cab section shines with 172 custom cabinet + mic combination IRs we created on purpose for this instrument, using top-of-the-shelf cabinets and mics placed in a pro studio with Neve, API, and SSL mic preamps and EQs.

5 Cabinets, up to 8 microphones, and up to 7 positions combined.

Cabs

• Ampeg 6 x 10"
• Ashdown 1 x 15"
• Ashdown 2 x 10"
• Hartke 4 x 10"
• Mesa Boogie 4 x 10"

Microphones (and Positions)

• AKG D112: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away
• Audix D6: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away
• Electro-Voice RE-20: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away
• Heil Sound PR48: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away
• Neumann U87Ai: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away, far cardiod, far omni
• Sennheiser MD421: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away
• Shure Beta52A: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away
• Sontronics DM1-B condenser: on axis, off axis (2 versions on the 15" cab), 45 degrees, 12 inches away

Features

• 964 MB (lossless compressed) library size, 6517 samples
• Samples are looped after roughly 6 seconds to save on RAM
• 4 sustaining dynamic layers, chromatically sampled
• 4 round robins for each note/dynamic
• All 5 Strings sampled in their length
• 8 release trails layers for each note/string
• Fingered, Fingered Mute and Harmonics main articulations
• Sampled with a Millennia DI preamps fed direct into Apogee converters
• Ease of use thanks to our custom advanced scripting
• Recorded at 24 bit / 96 KHz, released at 24 bit / 44.1 kHz
• Easy-to-use effects section for extreme sound-mangling

System Requirements

• Native Instruments Kontakt Full 5.5.2 and above
• MacOS 10.9 Mavericks and above
• Windows 7 and above
• Intel Core 2 Duo CPU or better
• 4GB RAM or more