SID

Sound Interface Device
Developer:	Per Håkan Sundell & Ron Birk
Header:	Custom
Content:	Programmatic
Instruments:	Combined
Target Output
Released:	1993-04-12
First Game:	N/A
Extensions	*.mus *.sid *.psid

Sound Interface Device (SID) is a format that houses Commodore 64 and 128 music. It consists of a BASIC program or a block of machine code which writes data to the SID chip, the entry addresses of the block, the number of songs in the file, title, artist, year, publisher, speed and used SID model. At a minimum, SID players emulate the 6510 CPU and SID chip in order to playback the audio, but SID files can also be loaded and played on a real C64.

The overwhelming majority of SID files are mono, as one chip can produce only mono sound. Some music may rely on two or even three chips (so it's called 2SID/3SID), doubling or tripling the amount of channels to make available hard left/hard right sound or even add center track to them with 3SID. No known games use this ability, only some Commodore 64 demos.

From 1990 to 1994, Sundell and Birk developed a SID player for their Amiga demo The 100 Most Remembered 64 Game-Tunes and for their tool PlaySID. Originally, a SID tune was spread over 2 files. Due to popular demand, a one-file format was introduced in PlaySID V2.2. This was the first version of the SID format.

Players

(Category)

• ACID 64 Player Pro - Windows
• DeepSID - Web Browser
• DeliPlayer - Windows
• JAM For Windows - Windows
• RdosPlay - DOS
• SID - XMPlay
• SID Decoder - foobar2000
• SIDPlay - Macintosh
• SIDPlay - Windows
• SIDPlay 2 - Winamp
• SID Player (Windows Phone) - Windows Phone

Editors

• SidEdit - Windows

Converters

(Category)

SID to ?

• JAM For Windows - Windows - WAV
• SID Decoder - foobar2000 - WAV
• SID to MIDI - Windows - MIDI, TXT
• SID to MIDI (Windows) - Windows - MIDI, TXT
• SID to WAV - Windows - WAV
• SIDPlay - Windows - WAV

? to SID

• GoatTracker - Linux, Macintosh, Windows - SNG (GoatTracker)

Games

(Category)

All Commodore 64 games and programs can have their audio ripped to SID format. SSI 2001 soundtracks theoretically can be logged/converted into it, though as for now there is no possible way to do it.

Missing

The majority of popular Commodore 64/128 games have their music ripped to SID format, but this list includes games that either don't have a rip, or have an incomplete rip:

• 4x4 Off-Road Racing (C64) - incomplete
• DragonStrike (C64)
• Insects In Space (C64) - incomplete
• Might and Magic: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (C64)
• Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World (C64)
• Moondust (C64)
• Rocky Horror Show (C128)
• Ultima VI: The False Prophet (C64)

How to Obtain

Ripping SID music requires basic knowledge of the SID chip and, depending on the modularity and complexity of the sound driver, fair to intimate knowledge of MOS 6502 machine code, but luckily, most popular Commodore 64 games already have their sound ripped to SID format and can be downloaded:

• hvsc.c64.org/download.htm - High Voltage SID Collection (note that game music is intermixed with stand-alone and demo songs).

Links

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_SID - Wikipedia.