I know people put a lot of work into these, so I don’t mean this to sound like I’m cutting anyone down. I’m asking because I don’t know. Why do all the bass lines sound like you would expect a midi bass line to sound, rather than a real bass? I know keyboards can produce bass sounds that are indistinguishable from a real bass so why does every one sound very electronic and sterile?
A couple reasons. 1) for many of the songs, authors used the same kit, so they all have the same bass samples. There is some variety in basses, but many songs use the same kit, or a variant which still has the same bass. 2) The BB does not use a true ADSR system for playback of samples. It’s a simple on/off. This means the note attack has no variance, and the end is a strict cut off. 3) other than velocity, there is no tone control. Midi volume is not enabled; pitch bend is not enabled. 4) there is a 100Mb kit size limit. This effectively means there is only one bass sample per note. You can’t take advantage of the BB’s multi sampling capability. Thus, the tonal differences achievable by striking strings harder or softer do not exist in the “with bass” kits.
Effectively, it sounds like cheap 90’s midi, because it is actually less controllable than cheap 90’s midi.
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So is it possible to get a better sound using any of additional hardware, like Aeros or Midi Maestro? I really don’t know anything about either of them either, so it may be a dumb question.
Midi maestro is just a trigger. It’s not going to change sound. Aeros, in theory you could record a live bass and loop over it. But, you can also just use the BB to play proper backing tracks, if that’s what you want.
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I have the Yamaha Genos which is one of the best keyboards you can get, and I don’t think it has a bass sound with a twang to it. I don’t think I have ever heard a bass that sounds like a bass on any keyboard either… you’re right.