Empire of Bass Expansion Pack for Horizen delivers 60+ ready-to-use bass presets and 100 original samples that sit well in electronic, hip-hop, and cinematic sessions, and at $30 it's one of the more honest-priced expansions in Tracktion's lineup.
We loaded up the pack on a Tuesday with a half-finished sci-fi trailer cue open in REAPER. The brief called for something with weight below 80Hz but enough movement in the midrange to cut through a dense string arrangement. We hit "Sub Tension" in the preset browser, played a root C, and the thing just sat. Not in an "oh, that'll do" way. In a "where has this been" way. The attack was clean, the tail rolled off without blurring into the reverb bus, and the harmonic content around 180Hz gave it presence without fighting the cello section. That was the good moment. There were also frustrating ones. We'll get to those.
This review is for Horizen owners who are wondering if the Empire of Bass pack is worth adding to their library. If you don't own Horizen yet, the base plugin question comes first.
What Empire of Bass Actually Is (and What It's Not)
This is a content pack, not a synthesizer. It doesn't add new synthesis algorithms to Horizen. It adds 60+ presets built inside Horizen's existing engine, plus 100 new samples that load into Horizen's sample playback layer.
That means you're not getting anything like MODO Bass 2's physical modelling. No fret noise. No string position variation. No MIDI velocity articulation switching. What you get is a well-curated set of designed bass sounds, ready to drop into a session without touching a single knob.
It's not for producers who want to build bass patches from scratch. That's what Horizen's sound design tools are for. This pack is for producers who want to move fast and still sound professional. Those are different use cases, and it's important to know which camp you're in before spending anything.
Living With It Across Multiple Sessions
Setup was instant. You download the pack through Tracktion's portal, point Horizen to the content folder, and the presets appear in the browser. No authorisation headaches. No iLok. Done in under three minutes.
We ran it across four sessions over two weeks. A hip-hop beat, a dark ambient piece, that trailer cue, and a house track needing a modulated sub. The hip-hop session is where we hit our first wall. We auditioned about 20 presets looking for something that sat below a trap-snare kit without masking the kick's transient. A lot of the presets carry too much content between 200Hz and 400Hz for busy low-end arrangements. You need to reach for a high-pass on about a third of them, which is fine, but worth knowing.
The house track session was the opposite. "Drive Mod" gave us a bass that moved rhythmically with the LFO already set to a musically sensible rate. We adjusted the depth from its default position, pushed the send to our reverb bus at about 15%, and it was done. Two minutes, usable result.
One annoying quirk: preset names don't always tell you much. "Bass 04" next to "Orbital Crawler" in the same browser makes hunting feel inconsistent. Tracktion could do better here.
The 100 samples feel genuinely useful. They're not the recycled content you see in cheaper packs. We dragged several into Ableton's Simpler separately from Horizen just to hear them raw. Solid recording quality, well-trimmed transients, usable at multiple pitches without excessive artifacts up to about a minor sixth from root.
The Trade-Offs Worth Knowing
The best sounds in this pack are genuinely satisfying. The sub patches have real weight below 60Hz without the low-mid build-up that muddies a mix. A few of the more dynamic presets show off Horizen's modulation engine well, with movement that doesn't feel random or cheap.
But the pack isn't consistent. Out of 60+ presets, we'd reach for about 40 of them again. The rest feel like Tracktion filling a quota. That's not a disaster at $30. It'd be a problem at $60.
The bigger trade-off is the dependency. You're $129 into Horizen before this pack means anything. If you're buying the full expansion suite, you're looking at roughly $280 total across all packs. That's real money. It buys you something like IK Multimedia's MODO Bass 2, which gives you a completely different kind of bass instrument with far more articulation depth. Empire of Bass wins on speed. MODO Bass 2 wins on realism and range.
We also wish Tracktion published CPU data for their presets. We didn't clock anything alarming, but some of the more modulated patches did push our instance up noticeably in a dense project. Light monitoring is fine. Just don't load eight instances on a budget machine.
Against the Field
For direct comparison, the most honest competition isn't another expansion pack. It's standalone bass instruments.
IK Multimedia MODO Bass 2 review models physical string behaviour and gives you articulations, fret position control, and round-robin sampling. It wins for anything that needs to sound like a real bass played by a real human. Empire of Bass can't touch it there.
Heavyocity Scoring Bass review is the cinematic low-end benchmark. Its articulation library is deeper, the orchestral integration is better, and the price reflects both. At roughly three to four times the cost of Empire of Bass, it should win. It does.
Where Empire of Bass wins: speed, simplicity, and the Horizen integration. If you're already inside that plugin, adding this pack is frictionless. No new interface to learn. No new activation. Just sounds that work in the workflow you already have.
The Real Verdict
If you own Horizen and produce electronic or cinematic music, buy it. Especially at the $18 sale price. That's a fair exchange for 40 genuinely useful presets and 100 solid samples.
Skip it if you don't own Horizen. The entry cost to access this pack is $159 combined, and that budget opens better options for dedicated bass production. Also skip it if you need realistic bass performance. This pack was never trying to do that.
It's not our favourite expansion we've tested this year. But it earns its price.
Score Breakdown
| Category | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Quality | 3.8/5 | Best patches are genuinely fat and clean; weakest presets are forgettable filler |
| Value for Money | 4.0/5 | $30 for 60+ presets and 100 samples is fair, full stop |
| Ease of Use | 4.3/5 | Instant setup, browser integration with Horizen is seamless |
| Features | 3.0/5 | No new synthesis capabilities; content-only pack with limited naming conventions |
| CPU Efficiency | 3.5/5 | Heavier modulated presets cost more than expected; no published data from Tracktion |
| Overall | 3.8/5 | Solid expansion for existing Horizen users; redundant for everyone else |
Alternatives to Consider
IK Multimedia MODO Bass 2 review is the one to buy if you want realistic bass performance. Physical modelling, 14 bass guitar models, full articulation control. It costs more but does something entirely different. No preset-hunting required once you dial it in.
Heavyocity Scoring Bass review is the cinematic choice with real orchestral low-end depth. If your work is trailer music or film scoring and you want a dedicated instrument, this wins the category. Budget accordingly.
Best bass VST plugins 2026 covers the wider field if you haven't committed to Horizen yet and want to see what $30-$150 can buy across the whole market before locking into one ecosystem.
Empire of Bass is the right answer only when Horizen is already in your signal chain. If it is, $30 is a reasonable ask. If it isn't, don't let this pack be the reason you buy a $129 plugin you haven't auditioned.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need Horizen to use the Empire of Bass Expansion Pack?
Yes, completely. Empire of Bass is a content expansion for the Horizen plugin, not a standalone instrument. Without Horizen installed and activated, the presets and samples won't load. The base Horizen plugin retails at $129, so factor that in if you don't own it yet.
How many presets does Empire of Bass actually include?
Tracktion markets the pack as 60+ presets. We found 59 in the browser during our review, so the number sits right at that threshold. You also get 100 original samples that load into Horizen's sample engine, which adds real sound design flexibility beyond the presets themselves.
Is Empire of Bass good for hip-hop production?
It works for hip-hop, but with a caveat. Several presets carry mid-frequency content between 200Hz and 400Hz that can crowd a busy low-end arrangement. You'll want to high-pass a portion of the presets to clean up the pocket. The sub-focused patches work better for trap and lo-fi styles than the more complex modulated ones.
How does Empire of Bass compare to buying a standalone bass plugin?
It doesn't compete with standalone bass instruments on articulation, realism, or range. Products like MODO Bass 2 offer physical modelling and velocity-switched articulations that Empire of Bass simply doesn't attempt. What this pack offers is speed and workflow integration for Horizen users. Pick based on whether you need designed sounds fast or realistic performance depth.