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C64 Chiptunes: SID Player for iPhone with full HVSC Capability

Mar

Member
I think this one slipped under the radar of everybody. Including me who checked the app store constantly awaiting its release.

But it was released. Late last year.

A fully featured SID Player for iPhone, with song lengths, and online / offline play (songs download from HVSC and are stored in a cache). It also has a button to download all 36000 tracks to the cache in one go (it took all night for me).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShFgu8mTAyc

Emulation seems pretty accurate. I have a large collection of SIDs on my phone in MP3 format as well, recorded directly from the C64 sound chips themselves (SOASC if you haven't heard of it. Worship this man), and yeah, you can tell a bit of a difference. But over all I'm very impressed with the sound quality compared with the real thing. You can also switch it to 8580 mode if the 6581 is having trouble with new tracks.

Now, the one big problem I have with it is you can't play everything in shuffle mode. Supposedly you can play the cached songs in a playlist, but I can't find the option anywhere to do it. Even then if that doesn't shuffle the songs then it's kind of useless as well.

But, I've waited over 10 years for a fully featured mobile SID player. So I guess I can wait a few months while I await a patch to put in shuffle. Until then I'll just keep my SOASC songs in my normal album rotation.
 

thaOwner

Member
oh man, that looked cool. Will this work with the iTouch too ?


else read the title as some sort of disease ?
C64 Chiptunes: STD Player for iPhone with full HIV Capability
 

Mar

Member
A Twisty Fluken said:
Bought this after seeing the mention in the Giana thread. It's very good.

Heh, yeah your reaction reminded me that, not only does no one know it exists, but that I didn't know it existed until last Tuesday.

I don't think I've ever thrown my money at something faster.
 

Fabiollo

Member
Mar_ said:
Until then I'll just keep my SOASC songs in my normal album rotation.

<Audionerdannoying geek mode> best choice imo. I don't like that much the flavour of the chips used for SOASC, but they still sound better than emulated SIDs.
</Audionerdannoying geek mode>

But I'm not following the emu scene that much lately, maybe they somehow managed to emulate filters and capacitors.

Edit for spelling justice.
 

Mar

Member
Fabiollo said:
<Audionerdannoying geek mode> best choice imo. I don't like that much the flavour of the chips used for SOASC, but they still sound better than emulated SIDs.
</Audionerdannoying geek mode>

But I'm not following the emu scene that much lately, maybe they somehow managed to emulate filters and capacitors.

Edit for spelling justice.

Well, until we have terabytes of storage on mobile phones and audio devices, emulated SID files are the only way we can truly have the tens of thousands of tracks to listen to. I love SOASC and prefer them also. But only so many can fit on my iPhone along with my other albums.

In comparison - as you are fully aware but for GAFs interests sake - SOASC is approx 450GB big. SID files for emulated playback total around 250MB. A very large difference.
 
Nice.

For those of us without an iPhone/iPod Touch, Rockbox has SID support on all supported platforms. I'm not sure if it's as fully featured, though. I tried dumping the HVSC to my Sansa, but I guess there's a minimum file size of some sort, so the collection filled up most of my 8GB player.
 

Fabiollo

Member
Mar_ said:
Well, until we have terabytes of storage on mobile phones and audio devices, emulated SID files are the only way we can truly have the tens of thousands of tracks to listen to. I love SOASC and prefer them also. But only so many can fit on my iPhone along with my other albums.

In comparison - as you are fully aware but for GAFs interests sake - SOASC is approx 450GB big. SID files for emulated playback total around 250MB. A very large difference.

True. I actually carry my favs on the iPod and use the high voltage at home. :)
 

Mar

Member
rohlfinator said:
Nice.

For those of us without an iPhone/iPod Touch, Rockbox has SID support on all supported platforms. I'm not sure if it's as fully featured, though.

The first requirement of a SID player is that it supports the track lengths that HVSC compiled. Because without them, a SID file will play forever, endlessly looping. You would have to manually skip to the next track or put in some random amount of time for it to auto skip. Therefore possibly listening to nothing for minutes at a time, or not hearing minutes worth of a track.

It's why most music players who boast SID support are actually completely useless and they may as well not have the functionality at all.

If Rockbox does do that, then I guess they beat iPhone to the punch, and I wish I knew about it sooner.
 

Bojangles

Member
I'm really not trying to pooh pooh on the thread, because.. well, fucking god knows the C64 is pretty much the EOTF (everything of the forever).

But.... I quite enjoy my Shoutcast client for my iPhone, coupled with some decent stations (Slayer radio, and SID station)

I adore my 64.
 

Mar

Member
Bojangles said:
I'm really not trying to pooh pooh on the thread, because.. well, fucking god knows the C64 is pretty much the EOTF (everything of the forever).

But.... I quite enjoy my Shoutcast client for my iPhone, coupled with some decent stations (Slayer radio, and SID station)

I adore my 64.

04CLiGJhbC81FQUXXFJRFzBDL2FjaC8wL0EAAAAA5+fn-DuwTw==.jpg

I Adore My 64
Complete level 64 without losing a life while playing it.
15G
 
D

Deleted member 21120

Unconfirmed Member
Wait, so there's no "shuffle" option? srsly?
 

Mar

Member
Cocopjojo said:
Wait, so there's no "shuffle" option? srsly?

As far as I can tell, there isn't. It's entirely retarded and I hope they patch it in as soon as possible. I have the entire HVSC library waiting on my phone waiting.

I have emailed the author but haven't received a reply yet.
 
D

Deleted member 21120

Unconfirmed Member
Mar_ said:
As far as I can tell, there isn't. It's entirely retarded and I hope they patch it in as soon as possible. I have the entire HVSC library waiting on my phone waiting.

I have emailed the author but haven't received a reply yet.
Yeah, and even if you just leave it playing on an artist, it will stop when it reaches the end of that artist's tracks. wat.
 

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
Mar_ said:
It also has a button to download all 36000 tracks to the cache in one go (it took all night for me).

Are there 36,000 public domain / royalty free SID songs out there?

I ask as this sounds like a nice technical program that has a "break copyright law" button, and I'm puzzled as to how it got past Apple.
 

dock

Member
I picked this up a while ago when it was mentioned on IGN Retro.

I wish this had a better user interface. I would like to see something like community created playlists or something, or sorting by genre and shuffling within that genre. Other than Rob Hubbard I don't really know any C64 musicians.
 

Mar

Member
DavidDayton said:
Are there 36,000 public domain / royalty free SID songs out there?

I ask as this sounds like a nice technical program that has a "break copyright law" button, and I'm puzzled as to how it got past Apple.

I believe they get away with it by selling the app without any music whatsoever. You have to download the music yourself. Granted, it's a bit iffy seeing as you press a button and it grabs it all for you.
 

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
Mar_ said:
I believe they get away with it by selling the app without any music whatsoever. You have to download the music yourself. Granted, it's a bit iffy seeing as you press a button and it grabs it all for you.

That's the problem I'd see with the system, at the moment... it's a commercial release that has a "pirate/break copyright law now" button. I'm just amazed that it's in the release.
 

Mar

Member
DavidDayton said:
That's the problem I'd see with the system, at the moment... it's a commercial release that has a "pirate/break copyright law now" button. I'm just amazed that it's in the release.

From the HVSC FAQ:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER

All of the tunes available in the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) are copyrighted and owned by the original authors/software companies. Use for profit would be subject to law. Do not offer any such contributions to the creators of this collection for none will be accepted.

The copyright to some of the SID files in this collection are now copyright administered by High Technology Publishing Limited and appear in HVSC with their explicit permission. Unauthorised commercial exploitation of any tune in this collection is illegal.

Hmm... Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see the app get pulled to be honest.
 

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
"All of the tunes available in the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) are copyrighted and owned by the original authors/software companies. Use for profit would be subject to law. Do not offer any such contributions to the creators of this collection for none will be accepted."

Oh, that's rich.
 

Mar

Member
However, as long as the app is still available and providing the awesome. I'd urge everyone to email the author(s) and try and get shuffle implemented as soon as humanly possible.

If you have a feature request or want to report a bug, please mail to sidplayer <at> vanille <dot> de.
 

Mar

Member
Listening to some of these tracks that aren't in my normal rotation. I can't help but get a greater understanding of how godlike Rob Hubbard really is.

dock said:
Other than Rob Hubbard I don't really know any C64 musicians.

Martin Galway would be another good place to start.
 

Mar

Member
Received a reply from the authors:

random playback is already at our internal wishlist.

We will add it definitely with an update later.

Regards,
Kai Teuber

Great news.
 
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