Trilian by Spectrasonics

Revision as of 17:11, 2 January 2010

A quarry

General Information

Original Author: Staffay

Weapon: Virtual Instrument (Bass)

Make: Spectrasonics

Model: Trililan

Price: 238€ (Thomann.de)

Introduction

Spectrasonics has a long tradition in the art of bass sampling. Started nearly 15 years ago with the CD's "Bass Legends" and the nowadays studio standard "Trilogy" virtual bass, they have always been in a leauge at it own. Trilogy was released 7 years ago, and can be heard on many records. Trilian is the follow-up consisting 10 times the samples, more basses (Trilogy just had three), FM-synthesis, a new interface, key-switching (see below), effects and many other goodies.

The product

Trilian is based round the same engine that Omnisphere, that is called "Steam" by Spectrasonics that also features the same browsing interface. Trilian consists of 60 sampled basses with a total of 34 GB memory. Spectrasonics also included all the vintage bass synthesizers as well as "freshened up" the old Trilogy sounds with dedicated patches from Marcus Miller, John Patitucci etc. The library has also native 64-bit support that makes ideal for future use.

All kinds of basses can be found in this product and with an extensive effect panel, equalizer, the possibility to stack sounds in layer, just gives enormous resources. All articulations like slides, hammer-ons, vibrato etc. is made for each instrument and can be assigned to controllers or automated on release via a "round-robin" system. There is mic/amp modelling as well as FM-synthesis to finally shape the sound.

In Use

I've been using this product for a week by now and must say that I'm totally blown off. If Trilogy was good this is a killer... The installer runs without a single problem and once installed there is only one major problem: You will probably wanna go out and buy a new computer since this product eats memory. The "normal" sounds is about 1.5 - 2 GB and there is some I found at 3 GB as well. But there is a "economic" mode as well that can be used when composing, and then render the full track down to 2-channels when ready.

This is a true "Plug & Play" product that is very easy to handle, BUT if You wanna get real seious there's a lot of parameters under the hood. Just browsing through the sounds will get You occupied for a looong time! Right now I'm using a Fender Jazzbass with finger-picked attack, that are simply stunning. The acoustic bass sounds is so good that I will use them as reference when recording real basses in the future, especially the Patitucci upright bass sounds extra-ordinary real.

As in Trilogy Trilian has an "A" and a "B" patch that can be combined, but in both "A" and "B" up to 8 additional layers can be created freely with fret noise, slide samples or another bass sound in desired. There is huge effect rack with convoltion reverbs, deays, distorsion, compressors - all that You might think of in the terms of a bass sound. There is no actually need for shaping the sound further in the DAW, which also makes it excellent for all "smaller" hosts like Reaper or lite-versions of Cubase, Pro-tools, Logic, Fruity Loops etc.

The synth basses are probably sampled directly from the sources as they sound exactly as it originals in my ears. The moog, Novation, Roland and all kind of "retro-sounds" is all here, and on top of that they can be further improved by FM-synthesis.

Overall Impression

Alternative Weapon

I tried basses from Native Instruments, Chris Hein samples etc. and always ended up using the old Trilogy - now I will be using Trilian instead, cause it simply has no competitors.