rebirth (august 1997)

[supernova777]

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/aug97/rebirthaug97.html

ReBirth has been mentioned in SOS in the past, notably in our two-part software synthesis feature (April and May 1997). At the time, ReBirth was at an early beta stage, awaiting commercial release. Since then, Steinberg have become involved, helping to bring the full package to an eager public. This is not as strange a move as you might think: Propellerhead are also behind ReCycle, Steinberg's sophisticated sample manipulation tool.

Both PowerMac and PC versions of ReBirth come on a single CD-ROM. Installation is painless (but follow all tips regarding buffer size), and the disc is used as a 'key'; it must be inserted in your CD-ROM drive whenever you launch ReBirth. On the manual front, there's a thin, 'getting started' booklet that covers installation and simple operational guidelines, but the in-depth manual comes in the form of a PDF document, for use with the supplied Adobe Acrobat Reader. Now, this makes good ecological sense, but on-screen manuals are not my cup of tea, especially when you can't manipulate the text to fit it onto fewer bits of paper for more convenient off-line referral.

Launch ReBirth, and what you see is what you get. If you can't figure out how to make it go within a few minutes, you're in the wrong business -- it's that simple. The ReBirth screen is dominated by graphic representations of two TB303s and the TR808, with a strip across the top offering transport controls, tempo display and control, song position display and Loop display. You won't have found distortion or delay effects on the originals (as you can on the software equivalents), but they add extra interest to the software; if you want to be purist, you don't have to use them.

Each instrument is referred to as a 'Section', and contains, in addition to the main instrument, a Pattern select box, offering four banks of eight Patterns each, a Pattern length selector (up to 16 steps), a level fader, pan pot, mute switch, level meter, distortion switch (only one Section at a time can access the distortion effect) and a delay send knob. All that remains is the master level fader and bargraph meters.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• APPLE: Power Macintosh with 16Mb RAM, 16-bit audio, Apple Sound Manager 3.2 and System 7.5.3 or later.

• PC: PC clone with a Pentium processor, 16Mb RAM, Windows 95/NT 4.0 and a 16-bit soundcard.

[supernova777]

good screenshot of rebirth in mac os 9

[supernova777]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGFLdPxNg_8#t=187[/youtube]

this is totally rebirth for sure!

[geforceg4]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykJiT90PnMY[/youtube]