Apple and Roland Team-up to Improve Internet MusicEnhanced Music Quality and Unparalleled Control for Content Creators on Mac OS and Windows; Roland's Sound Canvas Sounds and GS Format Now in QuickTime 3.0 December 18, 1997
Apple Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) today announced it
has licensed Roland Corporation's Sound Canvas sound set and GS Format extensions for inclusion in
QuickTime 3.0, the latest version of the Company's award-winning, industry-standard software
architecture for creating and publishing digital media for Mac OS and Windows.
The new QuickTime 3.0 musical capabilities promise expanded creative control for music and multimedia
content publishers and a better sounding musical experience for consumers. An updated developer
preview release of QuickTime 3.0 and the new music instrument sound set are available for immediate
download from the World Wide Web at: http://www.quicktime.apple.com.
The Roland sound set to be included with QuickTime 3.0 consists of 128 General MIDI-compatible
instruments plus more than 100 additional sounds from a variety of instrument categories including
keyboards, woodwinds, strings, brass, percussion, and sound effects.
Roland's GS Format extends the General MIDI specification by defining additional music performance
controls that provide greater accuracy, consistency, and expressiveness for MIDI-based interactive
audio. QuickTime's support for this popular music format will enable high-fidelity playback of
existing GS-format MIDI content and will provide music publishers enhanced creative control.
"Roland Corporation firmly believes that the key to the success of interactive audio using MIDI is
the accurate playback of varied music content," said Ikutaro Kakehashi, Chairman and CEO of Roland
Corporation. "We are proud that Apple has chosen Roland's Sound Canvas sound set and GS Format for
QuickTime 3.0. This will provide an improvement in the quality of interactive audio worldwide, as
well as enhance the compatibility and expand the use of MIDI."
"For music and multimedia content publishers, the Roland technologies combined with QuickTime 3.0's
advanced music architecture represent a significant milestone in the development of interactive
audio," said Avie Tevanian, senior vice president of Software Engineering, Apple Computer, Inc.
"For the first time, it is now possible to create high-quality MIDI music that can be reliably and
faithfully reproduced on the consumer's computer."
MIDI Music Comes of Age on Internet with QuickTime 3.0
QuickTime 3.0 combined with Roland's sound set provides a wonderfully
rich library of built-in instruments. In addition, QuickTime features the ability to utilize
custom-designed instruments that can replace or augment the pre-defined instrument set. The
combination of MIDI's small file sizes and QuickTime's powerful built-in music synthesizer features
creates a truly compelling alternative for low bit-rate, high-quality, Internet audio.
QuickTime's music features are just one piece of its comprehensive media integration architecture.
Utilizing QuickTime's extensive text, video, graphics, animation, and sound features, along with
QuickTime's sophisticated webpage authoring features, content creators are able to easily author and
publish stunning, synchronized, mixed-media presentations ideally suited for today's Internet.
For the first time, with the introduction of QuickTime 3.0, content creators can use the full range
of QuickTime's music functionality on all major personal computer platforms, including Mac OS 8 and
Mac OS 7, Windows 95 and Windows NT.
Since QuickTime is already supported by a wide range of software tool vendors, content creators can
begin taking advantage of QuickTime's music and interactive audio features immediately.
"Now, with QuickTime 3.0's multi-platform architecture, Roland's high-quality musical library, and
MIDI's highly compressed music format, application and content developers have an ideal convergence
of technologies to accelerate the use of music on the Internet," said Ralph Rogers, principal
analyst for Multimedia, Dataquest.
QuickTime: The Foundation for Digital Media Creation and Delivery
Since its first release in 1991, QuickTime has been the recognized
leader in software technology for the creation and delivery of multimedia content. QuickTime is used
for professional video editing, web site creation, and the development of CD-ROMs. QuickTime 3.0 has
already won several industry awards including Videography's National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB) '97 Editors' Choice Award, Television Broadcast Magazine's NAB Editors' Pick of Show Award, and
New Media's Hyper Award for System Software.
QuickTime's music feature set provides an integrated, scalable, and extensible software architecture
for instrument creation, music recording, editing, playback, and publishing. With QuickTime 3.0,
Apple delivers the third major revision to its interactive music feature set and builds upon the MIDI
sound set originally licensed to Apple by Roland Corporation in 1994. This release incorporates
significant enhancements for music and audio synthesis, MIDI interoperability, and media integration,
and provides all of these features for Mac OS and Windows users.
Availability/Licensing
QuickTime 3.0 is expected to be available January 1998. The QuickTime
3.0
Developer Preview Release is currently available via download from the web at
http://www.quicktime.apple.com/preview/. Developers may license the current version of QuickTime for
redistribution with applications, titles, and media clip libraries that support QuickTime. For
additional licensing information, contact Apple Software Licensing by phone at: 512-919-2645 or by
email at: sw.license@apple.com.
Apple Computer, Inc. ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II, and
reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is now recommitted to its
original mission-to bring the best personal computing products and support to students, educators,
designers, scientists, engineers, businesspersons and consumers in over 140 countries around the
world. For more information, visit their web sites at www.apple.com and www.rolandus.com. |
