The ReBirth Museum is an online homage to one of the great music software products. Propellerhead Software have discontinued ReBirth, created this website shrine to its brilliance, and — here’s the nice bit — made the software freely available from the site.

ReBirth was a landmark product in the history of software instruments. It was a perfect emulation of three classic Roland synth modules: the TB303 Bass Line and the TR808 and (on later versions) TR909 Rhythm Composers, as heard on thousands of records over the last 20 years. ReBirth was a huge success and made Propellerhead Software famous, and Reason followed in ReBirth’s wake. Now you can learn more than you ever really needed to know about ReBirth, and also get a copy for yourself.

The ReBirth Museum now has the software itself, modifications for it, forums, and thousands of downloadable songs for you to play with. At the time, the buzz was immense — as it says on the website, the whole “hardware-in-software” concept was quite futuristic a little while ago: “Propellerhead Software’s ReBirth RB-338 pioneered a new era of music instrumentation that merged the principles of “virtual reality” with historic synthesizers and drum machines. This concept seemed impossible at the time, but has since become a common trend in music software. Since its introduction in 1997, ReBirth has influenced numerous companies to take advantage of contemporary technology by incorporating computer simulation into the latest generation of products.”