It was Vacation time December 2009, so I thought I would check out Kong audio’s new VST plug-in “Chinee GuQin” and while checking it out I thought I might as well write a review of it.

Equipment and DAW used

• 2.8 GHz 2 Core Intel Centrino based Laptop with 2 GB RAM (Windows XP SP3 32 bit OS)
• DAWs used Cubase 5 and Sony Acid pro 6
• Edirol PCR50 midi keyboard

Chinee GuQin v1

is a VST plugin so you need a compatible host audio/midi program and a midi keyboard to use it. Kong audio also provide “Small host” so Guqin VST can run as a standalone program too, but I have mostly run it inside Cubase and Acid pro.

Sound and playability

Having seen and heard a real Guqin only on the internet I am not able to judge how close the VST Guqin sounds to the original but in my opinion the VST Chinee Guqin is a great addition to the musical toolbox of a pop/world artist like me. It will easily fit in pop, world and ambient styles and a creative person might use its lovely sound it other styles too.

There are 5 (legato)patches, which are not very different from each other. A sample recorded with a bending/sliding effect is triggered by higher velocites on the keyboard. The result is you have realistic sounding instrument without using the pitch bender. The fifth patch also has key switches which can allow you to play trills.

System requirements and stability

The installation needed 435 MB of disk space. I had no problems with stability whatsoever though my laptop is not as powerful as some modern machines.

Ease of use and the Manual

The Guqin VST is fairly easy to use as there are not too many controls that can be tweaked. The Manual as of Jan 4 th 2010 is brief and sometimes not very clear. For example while registering you are supposed to “flip to the back panel of the plugin GUI and click the "register" button” but it is not obvious how to flip to the back panel. Just for your info to flip to the back you have to click on the grey area near the top of the GUI (near the ChineeGuqin/Kong Audio sign).

Tweaking the sound

There are attack, decay, hold, sustain and release controls to tweak the way the samples react. There is also a filter section and a reverb inbuilt. I prefer to use reverbs and sound shaping outside, but maybe some others might have use for this inside the plugin. The samples cannot be replaced but the split points can be changed. There was a note that slots in the patch windows would eventually hold subsets and had not be implemented yet. I'm not sure what funtionality that would add.

Summary

What I liked about Chinee Guqin VST v1

• I love the sound of the instrument it doesn't sound like an instrument played on the keyboards thanks to the sampling of the bending effect and mapping it to higher velocities
• Can be used to give an unique flavour to my music
• The price is not too high considering the effort that goes into sampling an instrument

What I missed having or thought needed some attention of the developer

• The Manual as of now needs improvement and needs to be translated into the different languages
• The ability to personalize the key switch mapping and create your own patches
• I would have loved having a trill effect triggered by the unused modulation wheel

Ok! lets face the ultimate question.... Would I buy it and be happy? and the answer is yes

check out Kong Audio's website for info on Chinee Guqin and their other products