how do you make a VSTi Bass natural decay?

[Preachers]

i'm new to this forum, hope this question can be solved.

i'm mixing a pop song with all tracks made by VSTi except vocal, and the bass is a nightmare because it doesn't have a natural decay, i can't make it real by myself, and wondering how you guys treat this kind of thing?

all i did is to use a compressor or a gate\expender, but they didn't do the trick.

[Richie Royale]

Welcome to the forum.

Which VSTi are you using?

Do you have access to a real player/session musician?

I would presume that you can change the Amp envelope regardless of the VST, but more information will help.

If not, have you tried automation to bring the level down at the points where you want it to deacy away?

[Preachers]

thank you for your quick reply, i'll give you more information about it.

i don't know which VSTi the arranger use, i had received the whole mutitracks from the arranger, it is obviously that all the instrument are made from VSTis. (that's very common in nowadays music production stage in our country) i'm just a mixer, and it's impossible to replace that with another VSTi, and no bass player available too.

it's not just in this time i meet this situation, this is very common problem in our environment, many arrange does not really understand music and audio production well, they just put a bass VSTi and go on their arrange, they take it for granted that timber sculpture is the job of mixer and it should be started at mixing stage, so this kind of bass tone i can receive often, and for a long time, it's still not been well solved.

manual volume automation can get a good result, but it takes too much time to do that, so is there a more simply way to fix it?

[Mixedup]

There are some really good sampled bass instruments out there that should sound pretty natural. But if you're trying to program a synth patch to sound like a bass guitar, things get a little more complex. Eg. part of the key to it is making the higher frequencies die off more quickly than the lows, so an envelope controlled LPF would be in order. But it would help if you could be clearer about what VSTi you're using and what sort of natural sound you're aiming for...

[Mixedup]

Sorry... our posts crossed. Can you post an example of the sound on SoundCloud or some such? In this scenario, I usually tend to process quite heavily to get a usable tone, and then look at compression/expansion/transient design to shape the envelope, and then use level and EQ automation as required. Sometimes, I'll even double the parts in MIDI and choose my own sounds. All depends on the material and the aim...

[. . . Delete This User . . .]

yes, send it back to the arranger , and tell them to lengthen the midi notes on the bass part.

nothing else you do has the remotest chance of sounding truly "natural"

you can achieve some lengthening of the apparent note with a compressor , using a low threshold, relatively high ratio, lots of make up gain, with a limiter after it....

but it really does not sound natural, and robs the tone of impact if you set too short an attack time....

[Preachers]

ok, here is it http://soundcloud.com/preachers_guitar/orginal-vsti-bass

just a short clip

[Preachers]

yeah, i know it is impossible to get a real natural sound, all my attention is on the envelope.

i'v tried normal compressors\expanders\gates\amp simulators etc. but still not get a good result on it. maybe it can be make do with my processed result this time, but i'll continuously meet this kind of situation. this time i really want to get a good way to treat it for later use.

[The Elf]

Personally I don't hear much wrong that needs fixing, but clearly you have something specific in mind.

If you want to persist with the sound you have then you may save time overall by simply getting busy with some cutting and editing to put fades on each note.