Somewhat of an updated version of Spectrasonics’ Trilogy synth, the new Trilian platform is kin to Omnisphere and shares much of its workflow. The library ships on four DVDs and expands to around 34GB once fully installed – it’s a monster.
Using the new Steam Engine, Trilian offers a massive collection of synth and analogue bass patches with full synthesis and FX layers. In addition, you get plenty of performance mods such as dynamic round robins, automatic legato, and an intuitive Live Mode for applying your own custom articulations.
Getting Setup
A large chunk of the huge install is dedicated to an excellent acoustic double bass, plus a smattering of classic electric basses – Fender Precision, Jazz, a Music Man five-string, and the always-interesting Chapman Stick. You’ll also find a host of beautifully sampled, bass-focused synths like the ARP 2600, Moog Taurus pedal bass, Yamaha CS-80, and Dave Smith Tetra. On top of all this, you get all the original but remastered Trilogy samples – totalling around 350 basses.
Though the synth engine isn’t as feature-rich as its Omnisphere sibling, you still get advanced control with 19 twin filters per instrument, six LFOs, FM, and Harmonia effects. The modulation section offers 26 sources to 47 destinations, with a full mod matrix interface – all of this twice for layers A and B per patch. It’s a fairly serious synth.
Road Test
The big show pony here is the acoustic double bass, and yes – it sounds extremely convincing. In full-range mode, you get 12 velocity layers with 16 round-robin variations per note. It’s not as demanding on the CPU as you might expect, either. We found performance seamless and very expressive with everything enabled. Out of the box, the bass is quite aggressive and throaty, so a little tweaking of the pickup controls is needed to tame it.
Each bass patch includes its own macro interface, usually consisting of mic mix, compressor, and EQ options. The acoustic bass features U-147 mic, pickup, and noise mix controls, legato, velocity intensity, compressor, humanize, and a four-band EQ – plenty of customization before you even reach the synthesis section.
Playing the bass on a keyboard feels natural, with well-implemented slides, glissando, staccato, and ghost note articulations. Velocity response is nearly perfect for jazz or acoustic work, though you’ll need to push it a little harder for more slappy rockabilly-style playing.
Electric and Synth Basses
Overall, Trilian is an impressive instrument – easily one of the best bass libraries we’ve seen. The electric basses take a slightly backseat role to the acoustic, though they still sound fantastic. Unlike most other libraries, this one features natural legato on held notes, so playing straight eighth-note rock bass sounds superb – just hold the sustain pedal and play.
Working with the synth basses is straightforward. The browser is smartly divided by category (ARPs, mono, stereo), type (aggressive, drones, retro, etc.), genre, and model – perfect for my monkey brain, since all I want to know right off the bat is “where da Moogs at?!”
Each patch includes an interesting background on the source synth and its own custom GUI macro controls. Almost every patch we tried sounds incredible. Everything is meticulously sampled and balanced – you can drop these straight into a mix and bounce for mastering without additional tweaking.
In testing against some of our studio’s hardware – Roland Juno-106, Oberheim Matrix 1000, and Roland Jupiter-80 – Trilian’s versions matched their real-life counterparts well. As much as I love tactile hardware synths, there’s little reason to go chasing down rare boards when everything you need is right here.
That said, Trilian does get a little CPU-hungry, so be prepared to freeze or render tracks when using larger presets. We also noticed a MIDI rendering issue in Reaper and Cubase – glissando and slides sometimes failed to print to audio. Not sure whether this is a Trilian or DAW issue, but hopefully something future updates address.
Conclusion
This has been a thoroughly enjoyable trip into bass heaven. Trilian focuses heavily on acoustic double and synth basses, with electrics taking more of a supporting role. It’s a shame there aren’t a few more variants, such as a Steinberger would have been nice.
Unless you’re running a fairly modern machine, you might hit DSP limits, especially if you’re stacking other real-time instruments. Still, that’s a small price to pay – or maybe a good excuse for a PC birthday upgrade while you’re spending on VSTs. At $500 USD, Trilian isn’t cheap, but the value for money is undeniable when you consider what’s inside.
If you already own Omnisphere or Stylus RMX, this might stretch even the most wife-friendly credit card budget. Unfortunately, Spectrasonics still doesn’t offer a bundle for all three.
So is this the best bass-focused virtual instrument on the market? Yes – easily. There’s a metric tonne of expertly sampled synths and acoustic instruments here to keep any producer inspired for years. Orchestral and jazz players will love the traditional content, while the EDM and synth crowd will lose weeks diving into the sound design layers.
An amazing collection – and an essential purchase for every serious producer.
Full details and purchasing options from the Spectrasonics website www.spectrasonics.net
