Best tools to make good baselines?

[Rave]

I know a lot of people rate Native Instruments Massive. Download the demo and twiddle some knobs

[re.mark]

Within Lives Audio Effects, EQ8 and Saturation. Phasors and Flangers annoy the hell out of me on bass.
Outside of Lives Audio Effects - Decent filters with good modulation on Bass works a treat. But you can use Lives EQ8 for that if you want, beats Auto Filter imo

[flippo]

sine wave, ADSR envelopes, and side chaining compression and/or filter.

[the girl next door]

MINIMOOG 1.6 VSTi

[Saxer]

a bass, a synth or a sampler, compressor and eq, brain, ears and hands, time, inspiration, experience, endurance and ideas.

that´s it.

[Radio Arcade]

minimonsta or mopho DSI for me : )

[SubFunk]

there is not really a one for all for me,

but:

ultra analog, tassman, reaktor are some of the synths i love for bass patches and then applying fx, such as EQ, compression and usually very subtle phaser, flanger, filters, bit crusher, etc. at times even reverb... it depends, nothing really obvious, just to give the bass some live on it's own...
i aways look for the perfect tone and the best properties when twiddling on a sound before applying enhancing fx.

opposite to drums where i hardly do that, i tend to layer bass patches a lot and then re-record them (treated like a 'minimix' with fx and levels, etc.) as new audio files...

usually using 2 or 3 layers with different properties.

i do mainly tech house btw.

[jpga]

2,3 Operator´s,eq,saturator,eq,comp for sidechain,and a little bit of reverb.
Work´s for me!

[Klauser]

Loving sylenth at the moment for nice rich basses. I really like the sound of that synth the best thing I did for my basses was learning how to properly program patches for synths, really suggest investing some time I to this. Then you can create a good sound on most synths.

Also like basses to sound really sharp and dry, maybe personal preference, but get a nice eq that can handle the lower frequencies well.

And have fun making all your basses. Learn to groove in your chair.