Quick Take: The love/hate relationship with this pioneering softsynth continues.

If you made music on a computer in the mid-to-late 1990s, you probably loved ReBirth. Or you hated it just as much as other people loved it. Nothing could get antique mailing lists or a letter-to-the-editor column going like praising or slamming this early piece of emulation software, and judging by what others are saying about this, the ReBirth Wars are continuing with the release of the classic package in a new box.

One of the very first softsynths (coded by the people who later developed Reason and Record), ReBirth emulated the Roland TB-303, 808, and 909 (and could handle most of those simultaneously... sort of). Driven by nostalgia, ease of use or the high tweakability of the program, ReBirth had a serious following of enthusiasts who continued using the product long after it was abandoned in 1999 (officially in 2005, but it hadn't been updated in something like six years by that point). ReBirth has lived on via the ReBirth museum, where anyone could download it and tinker around, and users could provide some guidance for each other in taming the notoriously temperamental application.

Retronyms has officially brought the old warhorse back. Assuming correctly that other softsynths have gone far beyond ReBirth at this point, it's now been developed for the iPhone as a novelty rather than serious composition software.

(Enjoy the trance in the background!)

Reviews of ReBirth for iPhone (and also now for the iPad and iPod Touch) have been a mixed bag. Technology types seem to adore it, but enthusiasts of the original ReBirth have been less than thrilled by this port. Because that's what this is: it isn't necessarily an adaptation of the software product, but a port to a new medium - and the developers seem to have had more trouble with the quirks of the iPhone than with the troublesome software itself.

Retronyms has been both praised and criticized for using an interface completely faithful to the original. This was after all the appeal of the original ReBirth, which provided a familiar look for those who already knew the Roland devices. On the iPhone, however, it's a disaster: you're talking about taking a 1000 pixel wide application and crushing it down to something smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Adjustments to the multitude of knobs are made with your fingertips which is far more difficult than using a mouse pointer. The original ReBirth provided all of those Roland instruments on one screen, and it worked, because hitting your scrollwheel took about 0.5 seconds. Here, you're pinching and scrolling forever, only to realize that you didn't pinch or scroll hard enough and have now set off a couple of knobs. Some sort of tabbed interface or locking of inactive instruments would have been helpful - even a single 303, 808 or 909 product with some sort of integration woudl have been friendlier than this. It's frustrating, and the fidelity to the original look and feel of ReBirth is a drawback here, too: the graphics are low resolution and honestly suck for a product released in 2010.

And unlike the Korg iElectribe, don't even think about exporting anything useful that you actually create here via high-quality WAV files. Anything created with this app is basically stuck in this app. I completely understand that the developers aren't trying to take on high-end softsynth developers here, but unlike the iElectribe, ReBirth really is just a toy to fiddle around with when a game of Solitaire gets stale. Unfortunately, it sort of fails as a toy too: Solitaire is more fun to play.

In essence, this is a rather sloppy port of ReBirth that seemed to be inspired rather by quick cash rather than making a solid product, even within the confines of a cheapo amusement for your mobile.

Where to Get It (Worldwide): $6.99 in the iTunes app store.

Technical Specs: Works on iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad (note: tested here on an iPod Touch) running iOS 3.1 or later.