MIDISID: C64 Sound Faithfully Recreated

US 6-Osc synth using two Nano SwinSIDs 08/01/23

MIDISID is an intriguing 6-Oscillator Synthesizer from Sheila Dixon, which utilises dual Nano SwinSIDs to recreate the sound of the classic C64 SID chip. The device is displayed here playing music for an 'Imaginary Martial Arts Game', and you'll find more details on the synth on her website, alongside more demos on her youtube channel.

Here are some word from Sheila:

The most recent version will run 2 x SwinSID Nanos (which I can supply) or 2 x ARMSIDs. It should run real SIDs (There's a video on my channel where I'm running it with a real 6581). However, I state that I don't support real SIDs as I can't take responsibility for people's 40-year old chips that may be at breaking point or already broken in ways that they didn't appreciate before they had the ability to control all of the parameters.

It has 5-pin DIN for MIDI in. It has several modes that map the notes to voices in different ways, for polyphonic or monophonic playing, or sending in .mid files using a midi player or DAW.

I responds to note on/ note off, program change (and has built-in patches for the standard GM 128 instruments) and some control messages like pitch bend, modwheel (configurable for what it affects). Support for other control messages is in the works.

The menu / encoders allow you to choose from pre-defined sounds, sounds that you've saved yourself, and give you access to the SIDs' parameters; wave, ADSR, filter etc as well as some programatic stuff like PWM, vibrato and arpeggiation.

It looks and sounds great! Find out more here: https://peacockmedia.software/midisid/

More info in the PDF manual here: https://peacockmedia.software/midisid/MIDISID_manual.pdf

Sheila also makes a Theremin:

About the author [midierror]: midierror makes nifty Max For Live devices, innovative music hardware, award winning sample packs and hosts a podcast speaking to people in the music world.