Making bass line more punchy Sonar X3 Studio

You could use a gate side chained with the drums buss and set or automate the attack, release and threshold to fit.
 
Rocky
 
 

The thing about the midi conversion is the best of both worlds. Normally midi is entered from a keyboard controller or manually drawn. This will not come across the same as the way you would play it on a real bass.
 
I can lay down a bass track and convert it and edit into exactly what I wanted in way less time than it normally takes me to fuss with the bass tone, then the actual performance has to be perfect. With this method you play it as best you can and don't have to worry about tone, string buzz or small mistakes. So it takes what could have been an hour or more down to a few minutes. 
 
The editing if you are handy with the PVR is where you can polish the track to perfection and for me the end result is a better overall track than what I could have accomplished in that time period. 
The sound, tone etc of bass in a rock mix is a matter of personal choice and of course there's no substitute for the real deal. But if the real bass is not satisfactory you would have to re record it properly. To me there's no turd polish. A good recording starts at the top of the chain, not the bottom. 
 
VST instruments are samples of the real thing and there is no difference audio wise in a mix. It's all in how you manipulate them.
 

You missed the comment above by Mettelus. You need to process/transpose +12 
 
The down side of this whole idea is if your not adept at midi editing you will have a whole new world to learn which might be daunting at first. Some of us it's second nature as we been at it since Cakewalk was only midi. So the results will depend on your midi editing chops.  

Cactus Music
The thing about the midi conversion is the best of both worlds. Normally midi is entered from a keyboard controller or manually drawn.

What a great idea to use Melodyne, Cactus! I was always entering the MIDI manually (okay I have my own program for that) when it took me too long to learn to play the bass line perfectly. By the way I like to use the Scarbee Rickenbacker bass VST!

chuckebaby
Some great ideas on this thread. I also Dupe Bass tracks with Synth bass as well.
The one thing that Melodyne fails to do well is velocity changes.
I do a lot of hand muting with bass and sometimes an occasion fast attacking notes.
Melodyne has no clue when it comes to those two things. Some hand work is necessary. IE- Fine tuning.
 
This is a good example of doubling a Fender P-Bass with a Midi Synth bass. Listen to the intro-
https://soundcloud.com/charlie-roy/seven
 
P-Bass Is direct/clean. Synth Bass has saturation/dirty.
Probably not your cup of tea but that's how I do it.

Wow!   Talk about punchy!!!   Great for that style, but not for my country tune...
 
 

There are thousands of bass VST possibilities out there. I'm sure there are many better than SI Bass but I found the Jazz Bass patch and I added more compression sounds not bad for how I use it. If you have the time trying other bass VST's might be worth it as once you find the one you do like your more or less set for life. 
I find many of the bass sounds are what I call a tuned fart. Not even close. 
 
And another important trick to try while your in midi world is take the kick drum audio track and use drum replacer to convert it to midi. You can drag that track to it's own midi track too. Then undo the regional effect on the audio track and leave it as audio. I end up using the Midi kick track 90% of the time. 
Now you can use that midi drum track to tighten up timing of the bass notes.
Open the Kick midi track then while holding CTRL open the Bass midi track. Now you can see both midi tracks and line things up. 
 
I'm finding the combination of using some midi tracks that were from the live session and converted really sparks up a song. 
 

Transient designer didn't work...
 
I like how the amplesound free P-Bass sounds...   I transposed it +12 but it's not right, and I can't seem to find how to get it in the right pitch.... ?
 
I record in Eb...   wonder if that is a problem?  The pitch shift worked for the SI- Bass.

I think I get that part of it...
 
But why doesn't Ample Lite work the same way that SI - Bass does?   I do the exact +12 transposition, and it doesn't work. (and why do you have to transpose it anyways?)
 
I can see that when I pull the Melodyne'd bass audio clip into the Ample track, it does the conversion to midi, and the first and lowest midi note is Eb3.  Exact same as with the SI - Bass synth.  Then I try to transpose, and it does shift it to Eb2 on both Ample and SI. Hover over the midi note and it shows Eb2. But it won't sound the Eb2 on the Ample, as the keyboard display for the Ample shows that EB2 won't sound due to keyboard mapping. But the next 2 notes are wrong as well, in pitch.  ?????  wtf?  It sounds great, but seems it won't work. Dunno. 

Another cool solution if you want to use midi instruments: https://www.jamorigin.com/products/midi-bass/
 
Rocky

For the ample basses and guitars the MIDI notes have to be shifted 50ms ahead to have correct timing. That's what they say in their manual:
 
After  pick  strokes  string,  it  takes  around  50ms  to  get  the  string  really  vibrating. Ample  Guitar
preserves the moment of the stroke, otherwise it will sound like piano.
 
Additionally you have to put the START time to 0 ms for play back (default is 35 ms). If you do both things, then the timing should be absolutly correct.
 

Well I just tried it and it plays in the same range as SI Bass for me,, No problem..Are you sure your selecting all the notes before you transposed?  It's the only reason I could see your issue happening. Use CTRL A to select all. 
And you can always drag the notes up to where you want them. 
 
One other thing is some VST's don't like 88.2 Sample rate. I'm using 44.1. 
 
Anyhow thanks for pointing this out. I've downloaded the full version demo, the Lite version and the Upright Bass. 
 
Can't really hear any difference between the full and the freebie. I guess the freebie is missing a bunch of features but so what, sounds good.  I really will use this one. A little twangier than SI.  The Upright bass doesn't sound as good as the Dim Pro patch I use. Good stuff though. Might keep an eye out for a sale. I just love freebies that sound good :) 
 
I'm in Electric piano heaven with my free copy of Addictive Keys and the Mark one freebie from Focusrite. 
 
 
 
 

marled
For the ample basses and guitars the MIDI notes have to be shifted 50ms ahead to have correct timing. That's what they say in their manual:
 After  pick  strokes  string,  it  takes  around  50ms  to  get  the  string  really  vibrating. Ample  Guitar
preserves the moment of the stroke, otherwise it will sound like piano.
 
Additionally you have to put the START time to 0 ms for play back (default is 35 ms). If you do both things, then the timing should be absolutly correct.
 

OK, this helped...  thanks.   I still can't use it due to the muted lowest Eb problem, but came close. 

SI-Bass uses sfz files to map notes to samples (like all the sfz engine synths). While there is no way to alter the programs, it is possible to alter the sfz files loaded by the programs.
 
The default location for the sfz files used by SI-Bass is "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Studio Instruments\SI-Bass Guitar\Multisamples" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\Studio Instruments\SI-Bass Guitar\Multisamples"


Here is an image of the top of "picked bass.sfz." The lokey key value is the one that needs to be altered.

Sfz files are text files and may be edited in notepad or any text editor.
 
The trick is figuring out which sfz to alter. While the program files are binaries, when opened in notepad program files will display the sfz file name (just don't save the file or make a copy of the programs just in case). IIRC, the SI instruments only work with the file name and ignore the path using the default path above.
 
The programs are located in "C:\ProgramData\Cakewalk\Studio Instruments\SI-Bass Guitar\Programs"
 
good luck

scook
There are only 10 SI-Bass sfz files. Rather than mess with reading the prog files. edit all 10 of the sfz files and change the lokey to zero for the lowest pitch sample in each file. This will extend programs all they way to the lowest note possible. Don't expect the synth to sound good that low but it will solve the low end range problem and should be acceptable for the range mentioned in this thread. Make copies of the original files, just in case.

Thanks, Scook...    I wan't totally clear I guess on my recent posts....   i can get SI-Bass to work down to Eb, that is fine.  The problem was trying to get the nice-sounding Ample Bass Lite to do the same.