Sound quality - Mini Erhu vs Chinee Erhu, etc

[FC]

Hi, this is my first post here at KVR...

During the past few years I have become more and more facinated and interested in Chinese culture, music, history, architecture and so on. I guess it all started when I watched Hong Kong-produced martial arts movies when I was in the military, but that's another story.

I'm making music as a hobby, and here the other day I just typed in "Erhu VSTi" in Google. I don't know why I did it, probably just for fun, as I had already totally fallen in love with the sound of the erhu. I already knew that the instrument was included in RA by Quantum Leap, but the search result came as big surprise. A tool like ChineeErhu was totally unexpected, and the audio demos sounds amazing.

Well, to the point. I downloaded the Mini Erhu, and I have some questions. Although it sounds very good, it seems like each program only uses 2 or 3 samples which have been spread or mapped across the keyboard, resulting in samples beeing played back faster and faster the higher up you get in the instrument's key range, and thus the samples feels less natural. Especially noticeable with the programs containing bends etc.

So I'm just wondering if the full version uses cromatically sampled instruments, or at least has more samples (keys) to base the pitch changes on?
Same question goes for the ChineeDizi VSTi.
This was a bit hard to explain, but I hope you understand what I mean.

Also, I wish there were some more info on your web site about your VSTi's, about keyswitching and controlling features, list of articulations etc.

Anyway, your virtual instruments sounds really great.

THanks,
Fred

PS! I know your prices are low, but how often do you have sales?

[sosayweall]

Hi Fred, thanks for the kind words.

The difficulty Western companies (with a few exceptions, e.g., Spectrasonics) trying to do 'foreign' insturments are facing is they rarely have sufficient knowledge of the instruments, even though they thought they had it. That's why we can take them easily in almost every aspect. For example, the playability of our plugs is also exceptionally well above what's available on the market, as I was told by an impressed US reviewer who has some expensive huge ethnic libraries for review, due to that Shan understands the instruments inside-out.

MiniErhu and MiniDizi are free plugins with only a handful of samples - their purpose is to give the potential customers a taste of it. ChineeErhu and ChineeWinds, OTOH, are cromatically sampled for each note to ensure the quality. PM me with your addy and I'll send you the patch lists.

As for info related to our sales figures...that's classified. Recently there has been a thread here at kvr discussing the big picture of the plugin business, which may shed some light on the topic. We believe most devs are in the same boat.

[FC]

THanks for your answer.

ChineeErhu and ChineeWinds, OTOH, are cromatically sampled for each note to ensure the quality.

Too bad. At least for my credit card

PS! I know your prices are low, but how often do you have sales?

As for info related to our sales figures...that's classified. Recently there has been a thread here at kvr discussing the big picture of the plugin business, which may shed some light on the topic. We believe most devs are in the same boat.

I'm sorry, I chose the wrong words, my fault. What I actually meant was how often you put your products on sale (as in discounts, or reduced prices), if you ever do. But since you didn't have any Christmas sale, I guess that rarely happens. It's not that you don't deserve the money, you really do, but I don't do any commercial work so I always try to get the tools when the price is at its lowest. Your products are not at all expensive. By the way I red that thread you were refering to.