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Hardware

Synthesizers, Commodore 64 Style 106

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-damn-cool-hack dept.
A reader writes: "Elektron, a little company in Sweden, has been selling a MIDI synthesizer module based on the MOS 6581 SID chip pulled out of old Commodore 64 Computers, called the Sidstation. It's pretty slick looking, and makes some pretty amazing bleeps and blurps. Its complete with an operating system which controls a huge number of features of the SID chip, and even a little built-in sequencer. They've been manufacturing these things for almost 2 years now, but but they are about to stop production (roughly a little over 100 units left), due to the lack of SID chips around."
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Synthesizers, Commodore 64 Style More

Synthesizers, Commodore 64 Style

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  • There are about 15 C64's in every thift store in the country for about $5 each.

  • Re:Commodore 64 hackers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think what they meant was people hacking the computer itself, rather than just OS hacking. You don't see people doing that anymore because everyone's got different hardware and compatibility will totally be thrown out the window.

    Sigh.. The "good 'ol days" when the only compatibility you had to worry about was whether the guy had PAL or NTSC.
  • HardSID is an amazing card, even if it's a bit pricey.

    The only problem I'm having with it now is that it's an ISA card, and my current PC doesn't have any ISA slots - but the HardSID folks are working on a card "rack" that would work with newer machines, too...

    - W4, proud Commodore 64 user and owner of HardSID with serial number 37 =)

  • Pricey (Score:1)

    by troc ( 3606 )
    I kinda think that's a bit pricey for what it is (but maybe I'm out of touch with these things) I've not done much in the music line for a while but I'm sure you can get a decent (rack mounted ever) sequencer for that kind of cash (second hand at least)

  • FYI (Score:1)

    by Mumble01 ( 5809 )
    Lots of good SID-related links here:

    dmoz Commodore 64 SID category:
    http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Systems/Commodore/Co mmodore_64/SID/ [dmoz.org]
  • Wavetable MIDI card (something made by Orchid, I can't recall which model).

    Gamewave 32? Soundwave 32?

    Flavio
  • ... the SP0256 was a great chip. I wrote a development environment in Modula-2 for it... and
    then built a couple of talking alarm clocks.
  • The voice in IMpossible Mission (you were quoting IM 1, not 2) was not synthesized. It was digitized--just at an extremely low quality

  • Can we have the "Slashdot Mirror Engine" as soon as possible please?

  • Maybe they should shop for more chips on Ebay. That would bring the per unit cost up sharply since Ebay will gouge your profit margin.
    The speech synthesis on the C64 was pretty amazing for it's time. Remember the voice in "Impossible Mission:2",
    "Destroy him, my robots!"
    "Stay awhile, stay forever, Muhuhahaha!"
    Vam
  • The best emulation done currently is the one you will find in sidplay2 (sidplay2.sourcerforge.net i believe) and takes quite a bit of cpu from a pentiumII ... a 486 can't emulate a sid in all its finest details.
  • the SID willbe the 303 of the 21th century ;)
  • first, try to check www.buzz2.com it still resolved last time i checked.
    second, check www.buzzmachines.com instead of buzztrack.com
    third, oskari announced recently he lost the source of buzz in a hardware crash...
    (definitely buzz would have been a good candidate for opensourcing)
  • You're right. The DNS entry is valid again.

  • First of all, for whatever reason, jeskola.com doesn't resolve (I know it's supposed to be valid).

    But more generally, I've been really looking forward to seeing buzz progress, but have been sorely disappointed. Even buzztrack.com is just a coming soon page (soon, how long). Couldn't those guys just open up the source if they don't have time to work on it, like it seems?

    Does anyone have some more info?

  • Man I used to make alot of tunes on the C64. I think at the time I quit (1994) I was one of 3 surviving North American musicians. I went by Megmyx and I think it's funny that my old tunes are still on the high voltage sid collection. I released a super dope music pack called Telekinesis but so few people got it I can't find it anywhere. I know someone's got it somewhere but oh well. There were 20+ songs and most were decent. If anyone gets the Sidamp plugin for Winamp and wants to check out my old crap, I suggest the Driven songs. They were far and away the best ones I could dig up. If anyone knows where I can get Telekinesis PLEASE email me!

  • But even then, it should be trivial to build a copy of such an old chip in silicon. But then, there probably aren't that many people who would buy such a thing.
  • moderators... he was being funny (sarcastic)
  • OPL3 is 4 operators & 4(?) waveforms FM synthesis, I believe the same as in Yamaha's DX9, DX21, DX100 etc. (DX7 has 6 op, but only sine waveform. OPL2 is 2 op, no wonder it sounds bad)

    The DX100 has been popular in jungle style basses. It's a cute synth with 4 octaves of mini sized keys. However, FM sounds become often very thin when the frequency ratio between the carrier and modulator is large. The spectrum has whole bands which lack harmonics completely. This is why a lot of people dislike FM synthesis. It's good for basses (where you don't need much high frequency content anyway) and metallic sounds like bells.
  • I remember how awesome the commie was back in the day.

    I would be playing Ghosts'n'Goblins while my buddies with their Tandys were playing Test Drive in CGA with PC-Speaker beeps.

    I even had a 2400baud modem, and 3"1/2 drive. That sucker seemed like it'd never fill up.
  • does this seem odd to anyone else, they make a big deal about it being 'uncompressed' so it wont be as easy to trade over the net' but I have never seen the .vobs from dvd being traded or any raw format ( with the exception of vcd's) its always encoded by the person who rips it to mpeg, divx, svcd or what ever your choice of codec's is. I understand the problems posed by the chips only being in the hdtv's but what stops some one from removeing the chip and figuring out how to decode and then its just a repeat of the decss incedent. if hollywood wants to win this they need to get there shit together, till then I have no problem getting my movies for free:)
  • damn I posted this under the wrong article, damn lack of sleep, sorry everybody
  • a bunch of C64's and C128's to get the chips. I loved my C128, it was a real beauty for it's time. It's to bad no one builds them anymore, even as a collectors item.

  • How about those puppies? Anyone still making synths with them?
  • So, which ones of your many mp3s actually feature the sidstation? I'd be happy to finally hear this thing in action.
  • I think what they meant was people hacking the computer itself, rather than just OS hacking

    Yes, you're probably right! I was there too in the good ol' hardware hacking days. I remember getting one of those (brand new!) SP0256 speech synth chips and hacking it onto a Eurocard & getting it to interface to a Sinclair QL. *sigh* nobody does this stuff anymore .....

    Having said that, there is the HardSID board [hardsid.com]. I'm strongly tempted to hack this to somehow work on a Mac, even if it is ISA-style .....

  • Analog emulation has come a long way, Novation's(novationusa.com) ASM technology is basically the pinacle of analog emulation right now. Its difficult to describe how rich their synths are.

    That being said, the sidstation looks alot more like a novelty item then a serious instrument ... I don't think it could handle the rigors of being used in a serious studio situation -- theres been ALOT of synthesizers that can make great noises, but are such pains in the asses to use on a daily basis, that no one wants them :) I got out my credit card cuz I thought it would be a novelty to have in my rig. But for nearly 600 USD, I'll simulate it in csound or reaktor.

  • You should check out the following site:

    ZX SPECTRUM Computer Sound Chip Emulator Home Page [bulba.at.kz]

    This has a full AY-3-8910 emulator (Windows only, I'm afraid) with a pretty good archive of Spectrum SoundTracker songs to play with it. Also check out Project AY [jump.org], again mainly Speccy-oriented, but lots of tunez from popular games/demos (many of them classics in their own right).

    "Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd

  • ...of when a friend of mine used the sound module on his C64 play "Anesthesia" by Metallica. He couldn't get the really high notes (or, naturally, the wah sounds of Cliff Burton) so he transposed them down an octave. That was 1337.

    Now if they could only re-release G.I. Joe II: G.I. Joe vs. The Smurfs. That was undoubtedly the coolest game on the C64. (Runner-up: Tailgunner)
  • Tomas Danko [censor.net]has made a techno(?) album called 6581, using among other things the sidstation. Some sample MP3s are available for download.

    Check it out. [censor.net]



    --

    "I'm surfin the dead zone
  • In other words, for every one of these that is manufactured, another Commodore 64 must be destroyed. In fact, this company is making money out of destroying as many Commodore 64s as they can and will go out of business when they don't have any more to destroy.

    It was my understanding that no Commodore 64s were harmed in the process of making the Sidstations. I think Elektron just bought up the remaining sid chips in existence. Now the Hardside (www.hardsid.com) you can order with no sid chip. So if you have a spare c64 laying around you can gut it for the sid. The hardsid also has a quad version which supports up to 4 sid chips. Hmm...I have 5 functioning C64s. I technically only need one....

    c.


  • I used to write tunes on the C=64 using a software package called "The Advanced Music System".

    I don't suppose anyone out there has a disk or tape image? I've looked, but I can't find one.

    I'd love to play with it just one more time...

    Thanks,

    Malcohol.
  • ... I was going to eat this mummy^H^H^H^H^H^H SID chip for myself!

  • Dang! So they're the ones that have been bleeding the C64 market ...

    No wonder it's been so expensive to replace parts lately...
  • ...designed by the guy who later developed the Mirage, and founded Ensoniq? I think I remember reading this somewhere...
  • They have tried, and no-one has yet re-created the true SID sound.
  • It's a nifty idea, but I'm sure it wouldn't be so hard to implement something like this as a software emulator. Players for c64 SID music already exist, as do software synths like Buzz [jeskola.com]. They can produce some very cool music, though.
  • try it again. The link worked for me.
  • try it again. The link worked for me.
  • You remember wrong. Wizball music was made by Martin Galway... :-)
  • HardSID rocks, but unfortunately nobody has written any good HardSID supported players for Linux or other unices. I dont know why support in sidplay for unix hasn`t been implemented, the windows version has it. Does anyone know the current status ? Owner of HardSID sn. 62
  • Maybe the company can offer a trade-up for your existing broken C64 if the SID chip is intact. Send it in for a discount on a Sidstation.

    Or, Elektron can broker your C64 for sale of the SID chip to be sold in a Sidstation to someone else.

    I kind of like the latter idea myself. I might consider unloading all the C64's and C128's in my basement I'm keeping around for spare parts.

  • I'd quite like to get my hands on one of these - the SID was the king of the 1980s computer music chips.

    On a related matter, I'm always surprised we don't hear more electronica records that use (or sample) the old Ample Music 500 system, that was released in the mid-1980s as an add-on for the BBC micro. Vince Clark of Erasure (a famous 1980s UK electro band) used to use one; they had some fairly powerful sound generating hardware, and all that 'early digital' stuff is coming right back into fashion.

    So if anyone has one, keep it safe for a few years, and I predict you will command a high price! :-)

    Remember, early digital is the new analogue. ;-)
  • The funny thing is, you could just be right...!
  • ... I was green with envy over the sounds made my a friends C64. As a speccy owner the weak bleeps it produced were no comparison. Wizball particularly blew me away IIRC.

    It's nice to see the technology used back then is still 'useful' today. I'd imagine that my SoundBlaster 1024 Live out-performs it but it's not quite the same!

    Ah the memories!

  • This site links to many sid archives. There is also links to sid emulators.

    http://www.replayer.com/sids.html [replayer.com]

    My favorite is Sean Pappalardo's Sweet Success (in the game Driven 12 ?).

  • I think everyone killed at least two Commodore's. Remember to turn everything on in the right order! Having a little sister who could never remember this probably didn't help.
  • If you love the old C64 music, You would want to go to C64 Audio [c64audio.com].
    Lots of ye olde music there(and some dance remixes of them)

    --------
  • and the main theme tune was stollen from 'lazy jones', a c64 game, as mentioned by ntk [ntk.net]
  • Hell, the Amiga started the craze of MOD music, the format of music that is currently used in Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Of course, the file format has been updated over the years to allow for MOD files of over 4 channels (the current limit is 64 with 256 virtual channels [multiple samples in one channel are possible with the Impulse Tracker format]), and the limit of 64K per sample (the current limit is 4MB per sample, more than enough). Even track 10 of the Quake2 CD was made in Impulse Tracker (by Jeremiah Sypult, who is not willing to release the original .IT file of the song).

  • Answer: (Score:1)

    by kyz ( 225372 )
    build more SID chips!
  • Dude, oh man I remember Sid player. Whenever it came out, I loved listening to that music and stuff so much that I actually took a cassette tape and taped my favorite songs to it (Hey I was like 10). Im sure I could find the tape now too if I wanted to. The first song on the tape was the theme to Cheers. That sure brings back some memories.
  • Stopping because no more SID chips ?

    Why don't they emulate it in software ? My guess is it would run fine on any decent 486. With a basic mobo it should just run fine, full emulators that do more than just the sound work fine on 486 cpus.

    Then again, supply of 486 cpus and 32-pin RAM can also run short...

  • The Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 was the king daddy paw-paw of the 1980's synths. Nothing else came close to the way fat sound of a P5, well maybe a MemoryMoog, which also used the Curtis CEM* chips for VCO/VCA/VCF functions. The P5 defined the way that hard rock synth music should sound. I picked up a decent rev 3.3 P5 and the "Remote Prophet" remote handheld controller keyboard at a used equipment store for $200, what a deal. I even have the factory service manuals and schematics for both rev2.0 and rev3.x hardware. Did you know that the P5 used a genuine Zilog Z-80 as its processor? Cool.
  • It's a cool synth. But it has been available for at least 2 years, so it's hardly new.
  • Ahhh, Wizball. One of Rob Hubbard's best as I remember. That and Crazy Comets.
  • Hhm... I liked the good old days when things like generating sounds were cool, when figuring out that 'poking' values to 53280 and 53281 changed border/background colors, etc.

    For memory's sake, I have submitted this comment with option 'Plain Old Text'.

    Moz.
  • 1571 floppy drive needed, as the one I use has gone south. Will take 1541 if no other is availible. Unless someone here can tell me how to read the ol' 360K disks via serial into my C128. Still have a bunch of the ol' machine language programming on 360k'S. The Christmas Tree with lights and music was my fav, as well as an old Beethoven tune, looped, (Fur Elise).
  • soundblaster does NOT have a "state of the art" analog sound generator!!! (i rest my case!) zeb of anm :)
  • ...to base your product on a limited supply of resources, no? I think it would have been better to reverse engineer or have more of the SID chips made first!

  • In other words, for every one of these that is manufactured, another Commodore 64 must be destroyed.

    Err... correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that there are SID chips still in stock? Not sure if those are being manufactured, but I think they still exist as spare parts.

    At least here in Finland, I recently heard people were able to buy MOS 6581s or 8580s from local electronics retailers.

    (Then again, Commodores were astronomically popular in Finland back then... and there are still many active hobbyists who use the machine, myself included.)

    ::WWWWolf plays Deetsay's tune "MOS 6581, 125 mk"::

  • Old synths, however desirable or simple to make, tend not to come back. Take the Roland TB-303 for example (that's the squelchy acid bass-line synth/sequencer). It's made of transistors and possibly small-denomination ICs (nothing that would involve hard-to-find chips), yet is in short supply. Original units cost thousands from collectors, and nobody has made a 303 clone. (The rack-mounted MIDI bass synths don't count, as they don't have the tweakable step-sequencer interface, which makes the TB-303. A black box with a MIDI port that makes 303 sounds is not a 303.)

    You'd think there'd be a market for it, with at least some entrepreneurs building 303s from the original schematics, if not someone devising a 303-on-a-chip that allows mobile phones with acid-squelchy ring tones and plastic My First 303 toys for ravers' kids; but no. (And ReBirth doesn't count, as it's software.)
  • I've heard there's a part on the C64 motherboard that has a limited lifespan - a programmable logic chip or something like that - and so some of the older C64s are dying anyway.

    Besides, didn't Commodore make something like 22 MILLION C64s from 1982 to 1992? (I've heard they were STILL manufacturing them for the Eastern Europe and developing countries markets up until the day they went out of business.)

    And above all, if we're gonna anthropomorphize the C64, why wouldn't a C64 rusting in a closet WANT to live on in a useful fashion, by donating an organ to a synthesizer some musician is gonna love and cherish for years?
  • [Bad Business Move] ...to base your product on a limited supply of resources, no?

    That hasn't stopped the oil companies.

    Besides, I know people with whole boxfuls of broken C64s in closets. Commodore made about 20 million C64s. And realistically, if this company is in danger of selling a million of these synthesizers, they'll be able to afford to build a new NMOS fab and start making SIDs themselves from the original masks.
  • The SidStation was used extensively on the single 'KernKraft 400' by Zombie Nation. I think it got to Number 1 in the UK, and pretty high all over Europe. A short extract from the Sound On Sound magazine's article:

    Not only are the melody and the bass line both from the same sound source: they're also the same SidStation patch. "The bass sound is also a SidStation, it's the same thing through a filter."

    Sound on Sound is here [sospubs.co.uk] but you need a subscriber account to read the latest articles. There's a SidStation article here [sospubs.co.uk]

    Baz

  • I have a friend with one of these.

    It is an interesting synthesizer. However, it is difficult to program (it has an almost-noexistant user-interface), and has some stability problems. My friend tried upgrading the OS on the unit. Things got so fried, that he had to ship it back to Sweden to get it fixed.

    Before this, the unit lost its memory, losing all of the synth presets on the unit. My friend was cheerful about it--he figured it was an oppertunity to learn synthesizer programming.

    Keep in mind, also, that those old SID chips are really noisy.

    Personally, I would go for an Andromeda [alesis.com] from Alesis if I wanted to get a brand new genuine analog synthesizer.

    - Sam

  • There are several SID emulators out there, most notable Sidplay [geocities.com]. There's also the High Voltage SID collection [freeuk.net] for those seeking some nostalgia on the old games.
    --
  • The Track title was Zombie Nation, the artist was Kernkraft 400.

    The crowd goes wild ever time I play it....
  • Wierd - I've got the 12" in my bag right now - that Artist is listed as Kernkraft 400.....


  • You getting into making techno music now, Baz? :-)

    D.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Two words:

    ebay

    google
  • Yeah, I hacked my C64, I hacked a couple of VIC-20s, built an Apple-II clone, etched my own circuit boards, yadda yadda. Nobody does this anymore because all the chips and components are SMD, the bus frequencies run at multiples of 33MHz (and the CPU is basically a tiny microwave oven), and the circuit board traces are too small and too close together.

    Back when the ICs were all DIPs with 0.1" lead spacing, you could tell the resistors and capacitors apart (and tell them from grains of sand) and you could debug the signals with a cheap 10 MHz 'scope, that kind of hardware hacking was fun.

    Of course now I'm sounding like my father, grousing about winding his own coils and finding the sweet spot on a galena crystal.
  • You have it exactly in reverse. "KernKraft400" by Zombie Nation. See http://www.zombienation.org/ [zombienation.org].

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • The first song I'd play on one of these would have to be Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator [connectfree.co.uk].
  • Yeah.. his name is Al Charpentier. Both the C64 SID chip and the Ensoniq Mirage mirage are mentioned in this history timeline of electronic music: http://megs.com/neworld/tmeline1.htm
  • > Why design a product around an obsolete chipset?

    Feel free to ask Intel and AMD.
  • I found this today on the Analogue Heaven [hyperreal.org] mailing list:

    Paraller port SID synthesizer [buchi.de]

    The schematics are kinda sketchy but it's a neat idea. The guy who built it coded also a patch editor and step sequencer for the thing.
  • Using these synthesizers? :)

  • The TinySID player has a Linux version.

    Haven't tried iut, but here [uni-frankfurt.de] it is.

  • Something funny like a typo.

    Here it is [uni-frankfurt.de]

    10 Think
    20 post
    30 read
    40 correct
    50 read
    60 goto 10
  • Why don't they emulate it in software ? My guess is it would run fine on any decent 486. Because it has analogue components. To make it sound exactly right, you'd have model it, rather than merely emulate it. That takes a hell of a lot more processing power.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • This box looks a bit expensive for what it is. If you have a half-decent sound card, there are software alternatives ( e.g. Koblo's synths ). The bulk of these run on Mac OS.
    Probably not. There are more softsynths for Windows than the Mac, I'd say. There are probably at least thirty or more free VST softsynths.
    Does anyone know of any software synths for Linux?
    Have a look at this site. [linuxsound.at] Its a mirror, but the original gets swamped

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Emulation of a SID just doesn't cut it. IIRC SID's used a mixed analogue/digital design that gave it that unique sound that it has. Emulation & chips like the EMU10k have a hard time doing the analogue stuff without it sounding weird. The very best way to get SID sound, is to use a SID.

    Why they can't just build more though, is another question.

  • With just a few lines of BASIC and some filter tweaks, I made this random explosion generator that just *rocked*. The code has long since rotted away on a 5 1/4" disk somewhere, and I have yet to do anything similar on a PC with so little effort.

    Yet another reason I wish I hadn't gotten rid of my C-64.

  • I prefer the sounds of the OPL3 chip, but only when used properly. Most implementations (old games, Windows MIDI drivers) use the older OPL2 mode, which doesn't sound too good, lacking as many operators. Proper OPL3 sounded great, with real fatty, raspy bass sounds, simillar to old analog synths. The downside was the number of simultaneous sounds, IIRC.

    I used to connect my soundcard to my stereo system whilst playing games. There was a replacement Win 3.11 MIDI driver, and I also downloaded a couple of OPL3 drivers for some of my games - the one for Civilization was wonderful - far better than the sounds from my then Wavetable MIDI card (something made by Orchid, I can't recall which model).

  • It's just not the same... The SID chip had analogue components in it. If you listen to the purists, no DSP is ever going to sound like a piece of analogue kit... something about the sound being sterile, or something...

    Of course, there are the purists... and, for the most part, you can't tell analogue from a good DSP once the instrument's in the mix... But we're talking musical instruments here. If you look at it more along the lines of vintage wines/cars/guitars it'll make more sense than looking at it as buying an obsolete sound chip.
  • When I was a kid, I remember replacing my Vic with a C64... That was cool stuff. A 300-baud accoustic coupler salvaged from a friend's parent's office, and Zowie! I could connect to other computers! Ah... the thrill of it all.

    Was I the only one who also bought that two-octive keyboard and synthesizer software for it? IIRC, the keyboard plugged right into the RS-232 port on the back, and the software had all the on-screen controls to mimic the dials of the Moog synths.

    Last month, I found out that my parents still had all that long-lost hardware in their basement. I hauled it all over to my house, and plan on firing it up again for old time's sake. If it all works, I'll probably play around with it until I get bored and then sell/give it to some younger, more ambitious hacker.

  • I have used the Sidstation (sometimes two of them) in many of my tracks. Please take a listen! [orbikron.com]
  • There are different kind of synthesis around :
    • True analog, which is used by most vintage synthetizers such as the Minimoog
    • Virtual analog, which is consists of emulating the above synthesis
    • Wavetable, which consists of storing fixed waveforms in either ROM or RAM during execution. This is the most popular. As at the beginning General MIDI only accessed the pitch, velocity and sound bank, it evoluted according to 2 standards :
      • GS (Roland)
      • XG (Yamaha)
      which allow a more living sound to be extracted from a wavetable as tons of others parameters like cutoff, resonance, etc. can now be manipulated through the MIDI.
    • Frequency Modulation (FM) was used by the famous DX-7 synthetizer
    • Formant Shaping: was the real successor of the above even though it was (IIRC) only used in Yamaha's FS1R synthetizer which production was stopped some time ago despite the numerous excellent reviews [futuremusic.co.uk] (I owe one and love it :-). It has now become a collector as it has very good sound abilities (hear the Free Software Song Remix in my .sig for a demo).
    • Specific synthesis. This is used by any synthetizer hacked around some specific unfrequent hardware component. It opens new opportunities in terms of control and sounding. The SidStation [futuremusic.co.uk] was one of these.
    As a musician, I have to urge buying one ;-(
    --
  • And if any of you have heard "Kernkraft 400 [mp3s.com]," by Zombie Nation, the original version was created mainly using a SIDStation. Great 8-bit sound according to an interview in this month's Sound On Sound [sospubs.co.uk].

  • In other words, for every one of these that is manufactured, another Commodore 64 must be destroyed. In fact, this company is making money out of destroying as many Commodore 64s as they can and will go out of business when they don't have any more to destroy.

    Doesn't sound like anything a Commodore enthusiast would find very appealing.

    Can't they design an inexpensive ASIC to do the same thing as the SID chip, or are they truly just chop artists?
  • ...can't really be emulated that well because the emulation is flawless, and the chips themselves aren't. You miss out on all the character. The SID Stations do *not* use WinCE, they OS was custom made in assembly, and they release far more of the potential of the SID chip than a C64 can. I've had one for some time now and it really is worth it if you're a serious musician :)

    Love,
    Zoe.
    www.fsckem.com
  • Being swedish and old C64 freak and all that, I just had to have a Sidstation. So actually I was the first guy in the world to order one. Think I ordered it 20 minutes after I got the first pressrelease from the Electron guys. Ser: B90100019-81 it says if you turn it around. Meaning #19 ever made. So what does it sound like? It sounds like raw nasty, disted, lo-tech crunchyness. :-) I've made some incredibly fat sounds on it and it can produce some serious wierdness if you play around with it. A must have in your studio! /Bjorn Fogelberg http://www.mp3.com/bjornfogelberg

  • Zombie Nation by Kernkraft 400 (Score:3)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @05:08AM (#521465)
    Search for it on you favourite file sharing service - this track was *massive* in the clubs last year and even entered the UK single charts at number 2.

    The original mix had the main riff played on a SIDstation.

    But! The actual hook was stolen from a the soundtrack to the classic C64 game 'Lazy Jones' - Dave Whittaker is Getting a fair chunk of royalties from the 'cover version'.

    I hear there are rock bands who have done covers of C64 tunes also.... check out remix.kwed.org for more info

  • Commodore 64 hackers (Score:3)

    by Draoi ( 99421 ) <draiocht AT mac DOT com> on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @04:11AM (#521466)
    From the site:
    SID6581 was a part of the Commodore 64 - the computer with the most active hacker community ever.
    So there! Guess we in the Linux world need to catch up ... :)

  • Proud Sidstation Owner (Score:3)

    by antibryce ( 124264 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @05:14AM (#521467)

    I've owned one of these for about 6 months now, and it's the most unique, interesting synth I've ever owned. It can produce sounds you will NEVER hear another synth make. The noise from the chip is bad, but I use a noise gate or I sample it and use Cooledit to remove the noise. Either way it's definitely worth the ~$500. And Elektron is seriously one of the coolest companies I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with. The guys who designed it are on the mailing list and are incredibly helpful and friendly.

    As for some of the complaints (memory loss, flakiness) most of those can be contributed to bad power supply. It doesn't come with one, and some people go out and pick up the cheapest one they can find. the Sidstation requires a reliable power supply. I got a nice AC adaptor and surge protector and haven't had a problem yet.

    And for the people saying it's hard to program I only say "WHERE DO I GET WHAT YOU'RE SMOKING!??!" Seriously, this synth is so incredibly easy to program. The only thing that took me awhile to get used to was the tables, because it's an idea I've never heard of/played with before. Once I got used to it, making sounds was easy. Of course, even if I never use it again, it's still worth it for me, cuz I loved the Commodore64, and the Sidstation makes a nice addition to my 5 functioning C=64s :)

    Anyway, I really can't say enough good things about Elektron and the Sidstation. I'm just anxiously awaiting the Machinedrum (their next product)

    corey

  • Re:Program a PIC chip to emulate a SID chip! (Score:3)

    by kyz ( 225372 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @07:14AM (#521468) Homepage
    PICs are pretty powerful these days.

    But they're not an analogue/digital hybrid! You need custom silicon for that.

    Of course, you can emulate the entire C64 in software now anyway, wo why not just build a small PC into a C64 style case?

    Because you can't perfectly emulate the C64! You can only approximate it in a digital-only system! In fact, all current emulators are flawed - C64 coders can tell, in software, whether you are using a real C64 or an emulated one.

  • If you can't get enough of the SID sound.. (Score:4)

    by Myself ( 57572 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @04:07AM (#521469) Journal
    You should have a HardSID card in your PC. Because sometimes, emulation just doesn't cut it.

    http://www.hardsid.com/

    Having blown up my own SID chip at the age of 11 while trying to wire it directly to an amplifier (to avoid the distortion caused by the RF mod/dem stages of the TV), I can claim to be a true fan of the sound these chips make. The emulation you'll find now is pretty good, but very CPU-intensive. Still, nothing beats the real thing.

    P.S. I don't get money from these guys; I don't even know them. I just think it's cool.

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