Buena Park, CA. The Yamaha Corporation U.S. business development office today announced free public distribution of the beta version of Yamaha’s MIDPlug software. MIDPlug is a plug-in module for Netscape Navigator™ version 2.0 or later. It is a software synthesizer that automatically plays General MIDI files embedded in web pages.
There are several competing MIDI-playback plug-ins already available, including Crescendo (Windows, Mac), MacZilla (Mac only), and Netscape’s own LiveAudio (included with version 3.0 of Netscape Navigator, Windows and Mac). But Yamaha is touting MIDPlug’s superior sound quality, built around its XG synthesizer technology. The “soft synthesizer” built into MIDPlug features 360 voices (including the full set of 128 General MIDI voices), 32-note polyphony, 8 drum kits, plus reverb. It can also output the MIDI data stream to drive external MIDI playback equipment.
MIDPlug is available for PowerPC’s running Macintosh OS 7.5, and Intel Pentium-class machines running Windows. The current beta version can be downloaded from the Yamaha web sites in the U.S. and Japan. Full commercial versions are planned for both Macintosh and Windows platforms, but no release date or pricing strategy has been announced.
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