Rebirth RB-338

On first seeing Rebirth I was very impressed. It emulates (and looks like) two TB-303s and a TR-808. According to its creators, they analyzed the circuit diagram of the real machines and coded them into the PC. All controls work pretty much like the real thing, and (to my ears anyway) it sounds like the real thing - its probably much nearer than any of the hardware clones about at the moment. There are also two effects units - a delay unit and a distortion unit. Both TB-303s and the TR-808 have got variable sends to the delay unit, but only one can be sent through the distortion unit. It has a sequencer which allows you to build up 4 banks of 16 patterns each on each of the units. Each pattern has up to 16 notes in it. Patterns can then be chained together to form songs.

Rebirth can work using DirectX 3 (for very low latency) or with MME audio (which needs a more powerful PC). It costs about $199, which I would not say is very expensive considering what it is, but it is still a lot more than any of the other programs reviewed here.

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since 20/1/97.