I always seem to have trouble finding sources of decent string (synth, not real) and bass sounds. I have a ton of freeware & shareware VSTi installed, a few commercial ones, but still I seem to be lacking in some good solid simple bass sounds and string sounds. I’m writing house and dance at the moment, but this stuff always somes in useful.
Can anyone let me know what they use for strings & bass? Could do with some ideas 
Cheers!
The following are all free.
Crystal:
http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/
FreeAlpha:
http://www.linplug.com/Products/FreeAlpha/…a/freealpha.htm
Da Hornet:
http://liqihsynth.com/catalogue.htm#Free
SineSynth:
http://www.niallmoody.com/ndcplugs/sinesynth.htm
TickyClav:
http://bigtick.pastnotecut.org/index.php?a…=PROD&pcode=120
CheezeMachine:
http://bigtick.pastnotecut.org/index.php?a…=PROD&pcode=110
there’s one synth kicking all other’s butts: NI Photone
i use it for bass, strings, pads, stabs, percs, fx, everything.
soundquality and versatility makes the majority of softsynths out there (free and commercial ones) sound like a bad joke.
it relies on the reaktor soundengine, which explains its high quality sound.
give it a listen: click
while NI “Electronic Instruments” are good sounding indeed, this comes in cost of really big CPU load… 
its kind of backwards using reaktor inside renoise, but it would be soooooo sweet if renoise could send OSC messages!
that’s true, but i can still run 5 instances of photone without problems… or 2-3 instances + some VST fx and other VSTi.
i’ve really seen synths being more heavy on the CPU than those included in EIX2.
how do you mean that it’s “backwards” to use reaktor inside renoise?
and what are OSC messages?
more free stuff which you might like:
Iblit/ PolyIblit
ASynth
Voyager
ASynth appears to be non-velocety sensivitiv, voyager’s amp is currently not velo-sensitiv due to a bug
if you wanna spend money you could have a look at the VAZ series of synths… I only have the demo of the smallest VAZ so far, but I think it really sounds dense and analog (at least to my virtual understanding of analog sound 
)
has great bass as well as strings inside
One of the rare synths that creates natural string-sounds imho is string studio.
And bass… it depends on what kind of base you prefer.
People haven’t mentioned it yet, so I just as well might:
Synth1 - I use one or a couple of instances in probably every tune I make. It’s my main-synth.