IF you had a bass midi track, how would you apply audio to it?

Hey all.  I have recorded a bass track from my DR880 as audio.  I don't necessarily like the tone of the bass even after heavy EQ. Thinking about re-recording it as MIDI and applying a sound on top of that.  Not sure what the technical term is called. Would you use a synth? If so, which one?  Is there an equivalent to for the bass guitar as there is for drums ( ezdrummer ) or the native drums that come with Sonar?
 
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
 

Not really sure what you mean. Sometimes I thicken a bass line by mixing in a little of a synth patch that's just a triangle wave, you can make a triangle wave in most synths. Sometimes I find it helps to flick the phase switch on the track in case there are phase issues between the two parts. 

If it's a "regular" bass sound that you're after then Sonar comes with SI-Bass does it not? Have never tried it because I have some decent Native Instruments Kontakt basses that I use a lot. 

In terms of bass patches, there are plenty to choose from in Dimension Pro, Rapture and Z3TA (in fact it's worth learning Z3TA because you can dial in some great bass sounds in this synth). 

The Zeta+ Alembic patch is a very real and cool sounding bass... all bapu jokes aside.

Is the DR880 recording as MIDI or are you recording an analog out? What you want to do is have the DR880 create a MIDI file in the project. Then you can just choose any old synth you want. Sorry but I know nothing about using external MIDI hardware to record MIDI tracks but once you get that figured out you can change that MIDI input to any sound you have installed on your system. 

Setting up your hardware to do this is pretty in depth though so look in the X2 manual under the various MIDI topics especially using external devices. I don't think you're gonna get a simple answer here. Gonna have to do a bit of studying, dude.

You need to record the midi out from your DR880 while triggering a synth in Sonar in realtime. Mute the audio coming out of the DR to avoid confusing yourself and making it easier to hear what you're actually recording

If the latency is too great to get an acceptable performances, you'll have to start conserving resources by playing around with your buffers and bypassing all Fx

Okay... so if you can see the MIDI data on the track you should be able to change the track to output to a soft synth on your computer. I'd say clone the track and mess around with the input/outputs on the new one to see what you can get going. Sorry I can't be clearer but as I said I am not used to dealing with external MIDI hardware.

In the future you'll probably be much better off just writing your MIDI parts right inside Sonar using the Step Sequencer or Piano Roll View.

Hope you get it figured out. 

I like the SI Bass very well.  Also, you can download the free Kontakt 5 Player from Native Instruments and get quite a few free instruments from them, including a good electric bass and acoustic bass.

I've had good fun bringing in a midi track from the DR880.
The DR880 has its own sounds that have lots of different bass sounds too but its audio as you say.
But I do prefer to bring in a bass midi track as there are so many synths to run the midi thru.
Also a copy of the midi track can add depth and tone using a second synth setting.