The real question isn't whether the presets sound good. It's whether 64 patches at $27 is a serious purchase or a sample pack impulse buy you'll forget about. After loading every preset, running our favourites through two full productions, and digging into the macro programming, the answer is: it's a serious purchase for the right producer, with one frustrating blind spot.
Ultimate Future Bass for Serum Vol. 1 is a preset bank from Resonance Sound, released in April 2020. It targets the Flume, Odesza, San Holo, Illennium, Louis The Child, NGHTMRE, and WRLD zone. If those names are on your mood board, you're the audience. If you mostly make hard techno, move on.
You'll need Serum v1.214 or higher. That's the floor. Anything older won't load these correctly.
Does It Actually Deliver?
Resonance Sound built this around six categories: Arps, Bass, Leads, Plucks, Synths, Keys, and Sequences, plus smaller pools of Brass, FX, Pads, and Vocals. The headline number is 64 presets. The actual breakdown matters more: 21 leads, 15 plucks, 5 keys, 4 synths, 4 pads, 5 bass, 3 FX, 2 arps, 2 sequences, 2 vocals, 1 brass.
That distribution tells you exactly what this pack prioritises. Leads and plucks make up 56% of the library. That's the right call for Future Bass. Most of your sessions in this genre live or die on the melodic top layer.
The promise is "immediately usable" patches crafted with care. We'd mostly agree. Most patches load with sensible gain staging, workable filter settings, and macro assignments that do real things when you turn them. That's not guaranteed with cheaper packs.
Where It Shines
The leads are the strongest section. We loaded a patch called a bright supersaw-style lead into an 89 BPM track with a tuned 808 and hi-hat pattern. Macro 1 controlled filter cutoff, Macro 2 pulled back the reverb size, and Macro 3 introduced a subtle bitcrush character. We had a fully differentiated lead sound in about four minutes. No sound design from scratch. No wasted session time.
That workflow speed is satisfying. It's what you're actually paying for.
The pluck section holds up well too. 15 plucks is a generous allocation, and several have the clipped attack and shimmer mid-range that defines San Holo and Louis The Child chord work. We layered two pluck patches together, offset by a minor third, and the result sat cleanly in the mix without needing major EQ. Cut about 1.5dB at 340Hz and it was done.
Every preset has modwheel assignment. Some packs treat the modwheel as an afterthought and map it to something useless like pan. Here, it's mostly tied to vibrato depth, filter movement, or effects intensity. That makes live performance and automation lanes genuinely expressive.
The cross-genre reach also works better than we expected. Four of the synth patches pulled double duty in a Melodic Dubstep project at 140 BPM. The character held.
Where It Falls Short
Five bass patches in a genre where your 808 selection and sub bass design often define the entire record. That's thin. It's our biggest frustration with this pack.
Future Bass in 2026 leans hard on layered basses, growl subs, and wobbly mid-bass textures. Five patches doesn't cut it. We used three of them. The other two felt generic. If bass is a core part of your sound, you'll need a dedicated bass pack alongside this one.
Four pads is also light if you're building full arrangements. Pad layers underneath melodic pluck progressions are standard practice in this genre. You'll exhaust the pad options quickly.
The 2020 release date shows in some patches. Future Bass production has shifted toward crunchier textures, more distorted reverb tails, and heavier sidechain pumping by 2025 standards. A handful of these presets sound slightly polished in a way that reads as "slightly older." Not deal-breaking. Just honest.
How It Stacks Up
Gravitas Flavors packs focus harder on heavier Future Bass with more bass patch depth. If your reference tracks are on the Illenium heavy end of the spectrum, Gravitas is worth comparing directly. Their bass sections are more developed. Their lead counts are lower.
Production Music Live's Serum Future Bass packs sit in a similar price tier and offer similar lead-forward distributions. The difference is macro depth. We've found PML macros are sometimes more complex in routing but occasionally over-engineered to the point of unpredictability. Resonance Sound keeps it cleaner and more playable.
For producers wanting to go deeper into preset libraries and Serum expansion strategy
Is the Price Fair?
$27 for 64 presets and 20 MIDI files is fair. That's $0.42 per preset before you factor in the MIDI files, which we actually used. Three of the MIDI progressions sparked ideas we built full arrangements around.
We'd pay $27 again. We wouldn't pay $50. The gap in bass patches and the age of some presets keep it from being a premium-tier purchase.
If Resonance Sound discounts this to $19 or below during a sale, it's a no-brainer. Buy it immediately.
Score Breakdown
| Category | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Quality | 4.0/5 | Leads and plucks are well-programmed; bass section is thin |
| Value for Money | 4.0/5 | $27 with 20 MIDI files included is honest pricing |
| Ease of Use | 4.5/5 | Macros are clearly mapped and immediately playable |
| Features | 3.0/5 | 64 presets but distribution is unbalanced toward leads only |
| CPU Efficiency | 3.5/5 | Serum-dependent; heavier patches use significant CPU on complex oscillator stacks |
| Overall | 3.8/5 | Strong melodic core let down by a weak bass section and light pad count |
Alternatives to Consider
Gravitas Flavors Future Bass for Serum: Better bass patch depth. Worth it if sub and mid-bass design is central to your sound. The lead count is lower, so you may want to combine it with this pack rather than replace it. best Serum preset packs for Future Bass
Production Music Live Future Bass Serum Edition: Similar price range. More complex macro routing. Works best if you love deep modulation control and don't mind a slightly steeper learning curve on each preset. Leads are comparable. Macro depth is higher. Predictability is lower.
Oversampled packs: Skew heavier toward Melodic Dubstep. If your productions sit closer to that genre than to the Flume-and-Odesza zone, Oversampled is probably a better fit. This Resonance Sound pack stays on the lighter, more melodic end of the spectrum.
For producers building out a full studio toolkit alongside their preset libraries, see our breakdown of channel strip plugins worth using in 2026 to make sure your mix chain keeps up with the quality of your sounds.
If your session already has a Serum instance running, the CPU hit for these patches is predictable. Heavier pads and layered leads will push a CPU-heavy Serum session, but nothing here is aggressively worse than standard Serum usage. Plan your patch layering accordingly and freeze tracks early.
Buy this if you make Future Bass, Chill Trap, or Melodic Dubstep and need a fast lead and pluck library at a price that doesn't hurt. Skip it if bass design is central to your sound and you were hoping this would cover that too. It won't. It's a brilliant top-layer toolkit and an underwhelming bottom-end one. At $27, that's still a trade worth making for most producers in this genre.
Frequently Asked Questions
What version of Serum do I need to run Ultimate Future Bass for Serum Vol. 1?
You need Serum v1.214 or higher. Older versions won't load the presets correctly. Check your Serum version in the plugin's about screen and update via your Xfer account if needed before purchasing.
Does this pack work for genres other than Future Bass?
Several patches stretch into Melodic Dubstep, Chill Trap, Chillstep, and Hip-Hop territory. We tested four synth patches in a 140 BPM Melodic Dubstep session and they held up. It's not a dedicated multi-genre pack, but the leads and plucks are versatile enough to travel.
Are the 20 MIDI files actually useful or just filler?
They're useful. We used three of them as starting points for full arrangements during our testing sessions. They're chord progressions and melodic ideas that match the emotional tone of the presets rather than generic scale exercises. Worth loading before you dismiss them.
Is there a Vol. 2 and does it address the bass patch gap?
Resonance Sound has released follow-up Future Bass content since this pack dropped in April 2020. If bass depth is your priority, check their current catalogue for packs with a heavier bass focus rather than expecting Vol. 1 to cover that ground. This pack works best as a lead and pluck library, not a complete genre toolkit on its own.