Is This The Best Melodic House Preset Pack of 2025? Basic Wavez Releases Dreams Vol. 5 for Xfer Serum

As a melodic house producer, I always look for new toys to play with. And, considering the amount of preset and sample packs that exist for the genre, it’s sometimes hard to find a new pack that can take my productions to the next level.

It’s hard to make a bad pack, but it’s also hard to make one that I’ll consistently use considering just how vast my preset and sample arsenal is.

Luckily, Basic Wavez has made a preset pack that I can see myself consistently using for the foreseeable future.

I’ve been a huge fan of Basic Wavez for a while now – avid Magnetic readers may recall my glowing review of their recent Afro house pack. But, as I mentioned earlier, my biggest love is in melodic house. So, when the team dropped the next installment of their Dreams preset packs series, I knew I had to take a look at it (and check out my music below while you read!)

Dreams Vol. 5 – Melodic House & Techno Presets for Serum

Basic Wavez’ Dreams series has reached the fifth installment. This time, they brought in several different producers from all over the melodic house space to design 114 new presets, including Faodail, an artist known for his chill, texture-y take on melodic house; MXV, whose sound is a bit more high-energy; and Bound to Divide, who, of course, is the mastermind behind Basic Wavez.

This pack piqued my interest for one main reason: Serum is not my main VST. Yes, I enjoy the visual-heavy interface and wide waveform selection, but I am drifting back to synths like Sylenth1 and Diva to design most of my sounds. That said, I am always interested to see what I can discover in different synths.

If you own Serum, this will work for you. Just make sure you update your instance to the latest version before you get started, as these presets were designed on it.

In-Depth Review

As all of the names Basic Wavez brought in are people I enjoy listening to in my everyday life (Faodail’s a label mate of mine over at Enhanced Chill and Monstercat Silk), I expected high-quality sounds that I could very easily drag and drop into my next project. My wishes were answered.

The “Perfect” pluck by Bound to Divide. It does sound pretty perfect, if I must say.

There are some absolutely phenomenal sounds in here, but the highlight of this entire pack is the selection of pads. These pads make me realize just how good some people are at sound design: every one is jaw-droppingly beautiful, with constant automations keeping them interesting for a full 8 to 16 bars. I could easily see myself dropping a few of them into some of my current WIPs to add an evolving element with ease.

What’s even better is that I could also see myself reverse-engineering a bunch of them to create even more sounds of my own; that’s one of my favorite things to do with preset packs. Sometimes, changing a wavetable, a filter, or an effect on an existing sound can create a whole new one.

And, with these pads, the sound design is so complex on them already that changing one simple modulator has the potential to re-work the entire sound.

This isn’t to say that the plucks, leads, basses, and keys aren’t great; they are. But, if you’re going to get this pack for one thing, get it for the pads. They’ve pulled out all the stops with them.

In addition, as I mentioned earlier, all of the sounds in this pack could help you make any style of melodic house you’d want to. This is thanks in part to the different designers involved in the pack, who, as previously mentioned, range from all ends of the melodic house spectrum. Whether you want to make energetic melodic techno or ethereal chill house, there are sounds for you here.

I couldn’t quite fit all of them into one screenshot, but there’s some amazing stuff waiting to be discovered in here.

Now, I could go on trying my best to describe the presets in the pack, or I could just show you a demo track I made with some of them. This took me about twenty minutes to do, and the only adjustments I’ve made to the sounds are some side chain compression and a bit of EQ to make everything run smoothly. I’ve also used mostly MIDIs from the back, albeit they’re a bit edited. All in all, this took me 20 minutes.

I’d also like to shoutout that the drums and FX in this demo track are from another new Basic Wavez pack, Ethereal Melodic House by Kliran.B. While I’m focusing this piece on Dreams Vol. 5, Kliran.B really impressed me with this sample pack; it features some absolutely outstanding drums, which you’ll hear in this demo track. He’s definitely a sound designer and artist you’ll want to keep an eye on.

Sounds pretty nice, right? Now imagine what it could sound like with a bit more time and external processing. Everything sounds great right out of the box; and with a bit more love, I can only imagine how good this track would sound.

The project file for that demo track.

Now, let’s talk about some pros and cons.

Pros

High sound quality all around.

I’ve gotta hand to them, Basic Wavez is absolutely pumping out some of the highest quality preset packs I’ve heard as of late. Everything in them is essentially ready to use. It’s pretty hard to knock them on quality when I could see myself using each and every single preset in some capacity.

Competitive pricing.

Dreams Vol. 5 starts at 40 euro if you buy the basic version that only contains presets, and the Premium version (which includes presets, MIDI files, and WAV files of the synths) comes out to around 58 euro. Talk about a bargain. I always love it when places give you pricing tiers; that way, you can spend however much you want on the pack to start, and then come back and grab the rest if you want it.

It’s not often you can find sounds designed by some of the best in the melodic house & techno game at this value. Plus, you’ll be supporting an independent company founded by producers for producers. What else could be better than that?

There’s also a huge Valentine’s sale going on right now at Basic Wavez where you can get this pack in its entirety at about 2/3 of the price, and it’ll end on the 24th of February. So, if you like what you’ve seen and read here, it might be worth it to act fast.

Cons

This is not for you if you don’t make melodic house & techno.

I figured you’d be able to tell, but just to make sure you know, this is probably not for you if you don’t make a style of melodic house. I won’t tell you what to do, but I will tell you that there are undoubtedly more packs out there that’ll suit your specific needs. They’re great, they’re just probably not for those of you who produce heavier music (unless you want to spend hours re-engineering these sounds into growls, in which case, go for it).

Don’t have Serum? Don’t get it.

Pretty self explanatory here, but I’ve admittedly made this mistake before. If you don’t have Serum, don’t get this pack!

Conclusion: Should you get this pack?

I’d recommend this pack to anybody interested in producing melodic house and looking to instantly upgrade their Serum preset arsenal. It’s another triumph from the team at Basic Wavez, and I guarantee it’ll help take your melodic house production to the next level.

Buy Dreams Vol. 5 here.

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