Mortem DnB Bass Massive Presets Still Holds Up in 2026

It was 2 a.m. and we had a half-finished Neurofunk track that needed a mid-bass to lock in behind the reese. We’d been tweaking an operator for 40 minutes and getting nowhere. That’s when we loaded Mortem DnB Bass Massive Presets, scrolled to the Modulated Mid Basses section, and found something usable inside 90 seconds.

That moment is both the best case for this pack and the clearest description of its ceiling.

Mortem DnB Bass Massive Presets is Patchworx 56, published by Loopmasters and designed by Karol Ziober, a Polish DnB producer who records as Mortem. The pack ships with 64 NI Massive presets, 64 MIDI files, and 63 WAV loops. It targets DnB producers specifically. It costs around £12.26 GBP at Plugin Boutique. It requires Native Instruments Massive version 1.4.0 or higher. It does not work with Massive X.

If you don’t own legacy Massive, stop reading. This pack has nothing for you.

First Impressions: Dark and Intentional

The download is clean. You get the NKI files, the WAVs, and the MIDIs in clearly labelled folders. No mystery folders. No installer drama.

Loading the first preset in Massive, you immediately notice the macro assignments are sensible. Each patch has at least two macros wired to something useful: filter cutoff, distortion amount, or wobble rate. That’s not always the case with third-party packs.

The four categories are Distorted Lead Basses, Dark and Growly Wobbles, Air Pushing Subs, and Modulated Mid Basses. The naming is accurate. The growly wobbles actually growl. The subs push air. We didn’t find any accidental mislabelling, which sounds like a low bar but isn’t.

Getting It Into a Real Workflow

Here’s where we actually stress-tested this pack over several sessions.

We pulled a Growly Wobble preset into a 174 BPM jump-up track. The patch sat immediately in the mix without needing a high-pass filter to clean up mud. We cut about 3dB at 280Hz with a Q of 1.2 to separate it from the kick, and it locked in. One minor EQ move. Done.

The MIDI files are worth mentioning. We dropped the included MIDI onto the Modulated Mid Bass preset we liked, and it gave us a rolling 16th-note bassline pattern that worked as a starting point. We rewrote 60% of it, but starting from something is faster than starting from nothing.

The frustrating part: the WAV loops are not sliced or tempo-synced. You’re getting full loops at a fixed BPM. We found ourselves wishing the WAVs came with corresponding MIDI so you could repitch them freely. They don’t. You work with what’s there.

We also hit one annoying dead end. Two of the Distorted Lead Bass patches have very heavy saturation baked in. There’s no easy way to dial it back without going inside Massive and manually adjusting the FX chain. The macros on those two patches don’t touch the distortion amount at all. That’s a design choice we’d push back on.

What It's Genuinely Good At

The sub patches are the best thing in this pack. Honest.

We ran one of the Air Pushing Sub presets through a signal chain with an SSL-style bus compressor and a Pultec-style low shelf boosted at 60Hz by 2dB. The result was a sub that moved speakers without turning into a muddy mess above 80Hz. That kind of low-end discipline is harder to design than it looks. Ziober clearly knows how to build a sub.

The wobble presets show LFO design that’s more interesting than most preset packs. The rate isn’t just mapped to a single macro. On several patches, you get a secondary LFO that adds subtle pitch drift underneath the filter movement. That’s the kind of detail that makes a bassline feel alive instead of mechanical.

Friction, who founded Shogun Audio and holds a BBC Radio 1Xtra residency, called this pack “some quality bass patches” and gave it 8/10. That’s not meaningless. He hears a lot of DnB synthesis.

At roughly £12, you’re paying less than 20p per preset when you factor out the WAVs and MIDIs. The value math works.

The Rough Edges

The Massive X incompatibility is a real problem for 2026. Native Instruments has been pushing Massive X hard, and many producers who bought into NI’s ecosystem in the last few years are running Massive X as their primary synth. This pack is dead to them.

There’s no documentation. No PDF guide. No notes on what each macro does beyond what you can see inside Massive’s own UI. If you don’t know how Massive’s modulation matrix works, you’ll get value from this pack, but you

'll leave a lot on the table.

We also wish there were more sub patches. The four Air Pushing Sub presets feel underrepresented compared to 24 wobble and lead variations. For a pack with “bass” in the title, the sub section is thin.

Who This Is Really For

✅ Buy if you produce DnB in Massive 1.4.0 or higher and need a fast, credible sound bank with real genre credentials.

✅ Buy if you’re a DnB producer who wants inspiration without building from a blank init patch every session.

✅ Buy if you want WAV loops and MIDI included at no extra cost for roughly £12.

❌ Skip if you’ve moved to Massive X. This pack is incompatible and that won’t change.

❌ Skip if you’re looking for something that covers other genres. These presets are built for DnB and don’t pretend otherwise.

❌ Skip if you want detailed preset documentation or a tutorial system. You’re on your own.

Score Breakdown

Category	Score	Notes
Sound Quality	3.8/5	Sub patches are genuinely strong; two distorted leads are too hot with no macro fix
Value for Money	4.0/5	Under 20p per preset plus MIDI and WAV makes the price easy to justify
Ease of Use	3.0/5	Macro assignments are sensible but no documentation frustrates newer Massive users
Features	3.3/5	64 presets, 64 MIDI, 63 WAV is solid but sub category feels underserved
CPU Efficiency	N/A	CPU load is a Massive host question, not a preset question
Overall	3.8/5	Solid genre-specific pack let down by Massive X incompatibility and thin documentation

Alternatives to Consider

If you’re already on Massive X, look at Native Instruments Massive X DnB presets. The X environment gives you far more modulation depth and the DnB-focused third-party banks for it are growing fast.

For Massive users who want a broader palette beyond pure DnB, Patchworx Neurofunk Massive presets covers more Neurofunk-specific design territory and sits in the same price bracket.

If you want loop-driven workflow without committing to any specific synth, Loopmasters DnB sample packs give you more format flexibility and don’t require legacy software to stay relevant in two years.

The Bottom Line

Mortem DnB Bass Massive Presets does exactly what it says. The presets are dark, the subs push, and Friction’s 8/10 endorsement holds up. At roughly £12, there’s no logical argument against buying it if you’re in Massive every day making DnB.

The problem is the clock. Legacy Massive is not where NI is investing, and a preset pack with a hard Massive X incompatibility is a pack with an expiry date.

Buy it if Massive is your primary synth and DnB is your genre. That’s a specific Venn diagram. If you’re in it, this pack earns its money. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter how good those sub patches are.