retroputing

Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

"SID Player" is a port of the program of the same name for the iPod/iPhone. I actually found a couple of different ones. One was free, one was $1.99, and one was $2.99.

The one I downloaded links to the High Voltage SID Collection and are sorted by artist. As you pick a song, the app goes out and downloads that particular SID. You also have the option of downloading the entire 270 meg collection, although you'll need to disable your iPod's sleep function as it takes several, several hours. I left mine running overnight and woke up to a dead battery. Fortunately the download picks up where it left off. 15,000 down, 10,000 to go.

Unfortunately the player is pretty limited. While it has some fairly advanced features like swapping between the different Commodore sound chips and NTSC/PAL mode, it's missing some really basic functions like "random play". The entire collection is organized by artist, so unless you know who wrote your favorite tune, chances are you'll just be randomly picking people's names and listening to their songs instead of listening to the things you want.

While I seriously doubt SID tunes will replace normal music for me, it's an interesting diversion for a few minutes.
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Jibbajaba · Joined: 28 Jul 2006 Posts: 76

What exactly is a "SID"? Is this a program that plays Commodore game music, or something?

Chris

Ice Breaker · Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:14 am Post subject:

SID, or sound interface device, is the C64's sound chip. Anything that plays music/chip tunes on a more modern device is known as a SID player.
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Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

Exactly. SID was the MOD/MIDI of the Commodore world.

After two days of downloading, I gave up on downloading the music collection. I've seen the HVSC converted into mp3 so I may just get that, seems easier to listen to even given the significant and obvious size increase
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Flack · Site Admin Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 1528

Although I can't directly tie it to this, shortly after installing this my iPod has begun spontaneously rebooting, so I ended up wiping it and starting from scratch.
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