66 Basses (Legion Series) by 8Dio Review
Sample library developer 8Dio, known for creating important and wide-ranging sounding libraries recently released a new Bass library – a virtual instrument produced with classic, cinematic and trailer sound in mind.
As the name of the library gives away, 66 bass players performed joint articulations plus rare phrases and cluster, ostinatos, waves, and different sound FXs. 66 Basses are all about the bass in many shape and form.
8Dio has been very successful in the film score industry. Professional composers and producer use 8Dio libraries for their trailer, advertisement underscore, and film score. This library suits their customer in that need an epic bass substantial element added to their music. 8DIO send a review copy with no strings attached.
Installation
After the purchase, you receive the required codes from 8DIO to download the library to your hard drive. 8DIO offers a tool to transfer all needed files from the cloud to your local hard drive. After you downloaded the library, you do a batch resave in Kontakt. This library requires the full version of Kontakt 5.6 or later.
Sound
8Dio released a first loud bottom end bass library for epic cinematic scoring. 66 Basses sound enormous, the sound of many of the included patches is big and grand. You can instantly write a big-sounding piece (example below) or enhance your score.
I do recognize, that 8Dio has honestly thought out their recording process. The sessions have been recorded Zlin, which is in southeastern Moravia in the Czech Republic. The tasks on hand to manage all those bass players must be pretty challenging and labor intense. The recordings are a bit on the wet side as expected. The included mic position can be used to dial in a sound you need to create the sound of the bass you need. The session was captured in the same location where Majestic, Lacrimosa, Acoustic Grand Ensembles, CAGE, and many other instruments have been recorded.
The use of a binaural stereo microphone allows you to be in a spot where the conductor was located. The idea behind the binaural mic is moving the listener into the scene of the original performance. I do prefer libraries like this one where you can dial in the room through additional mics that captured the sound generated in that location. For the close and drier sounding cellos with more close intimate sounds (close/spot mics), I will reach out to different libraries. Keep in mind playing 66 basses at the same time is supposed to sound epic big and blow the audience away.
8Dio has done an excellent job in producing the included harmonics, waves and clusters. The patches are beneficial and fit well into many compositions. You will find many patches to fill that bottom end perfectly.
The included sound effects are beneficial; some of those effects are unique or hard to get otherwise. While many composers will jump on those effects and use them straight out of the box, you can take them and shape further with visible effects in your DAW.
The Synths are based on the bass recording and sit very well in the background of many scores. You can enlarge bass in your score by the included synth. These synths would boost the truly low frequencies and work with all kinds of different instruments from various companies. The Synths needed to be stacked with varying instruments and pulled back into the mix to make the magic happen.
Besides the different articulations, 8Dio did include the required short notes (Pizzicato, Spiccato, Bartok Pizzicato, Spiccato ostinato ( 1/4 – 1/16 ), Bartok hits (1/4) and sustained (Sustains, Tremolo, riser, Crescendo, and Decrescendo), bends and arcs which are all very usable and sound excellent. The harmonics are great to support other instruments across all orchestral sections.
There are the typical 8Dio effects included, and you can use those or your various plugin in your DAW which come with more features and variances.
User interface & Usability
Since the Century Brass and Strings libraries, 8Dio has found a new interface that works for me. The UI used with 66 Basses allows you to switch articulations fast, the simplified sequencer, effects and mixer pages are well designed. I am thrilled with the changes 8Dio made to the UI overall.
Rating: Five out of five stars
66 Basses from 8Dio are all about loud, epic and sub rattling iconic bass. A similar string instrument that is as full and aggressive is hard to find. The instrument is easy to play, and you get fat and large sounding results quickly. Like some other libraries from 8Dio, the library is unique. I would advise this library to anyone in the trailer/major music business or for anyone who needs some additional bass sounds to equip their template with.
