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Laurent
Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 40 |
The 6581 has fallen into oblivion
Musicians seem to have lost interest for the original 6581 model.
Is it because of how it sounds (low resonant filter, combined waveforms) or because of technical challenges (huge filter variability between revisions, quality of filter emulation) ?
There are so many 6581 tunes that we all enjoy that I cannot believe the "sound" is the issue.
The funky distorted 6581 filter is absolutely loveable, not better or worse than 8580's, just different.
There are so many awesome examples..
Googachild
Miami Vice
4-Mat's Filter
Dirty Pair
Now that reSID is doing a good job at emulating the 6581, I assume one of last issues is that musicians have no guarantee that a tune will be played back correctly, with the same filter characteristics that they used when composing their tunes. Especially when they're played on a real c64, it just cannot work perfectly.
As of today, even if we wanted to organize a 6581 music competition it would be laborious to play them back correctly even with an emulator.
Some extra info could be certainly added to a .sid header, but running the .prg in Vice would be more difficult, the SID player init code would have to write to some unused SID addresses to "configure" the SID. This would please all emulators but would have no effect on the real thing (except if it had an emulated chip)..
Do you believe the 6581 is doomed ? :( |
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TheRyk
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2060 |
Nothing to worry about, really.
One argument to use 6581 - against the trend - would be, if you do something for 6581 (apart from $D418 sampling which hardly anyone does anymore since late 1990s because there are better ways of doing samples/digis), it normally does NOT sound shitty automatically but mostly as intended on 8580. The other way round, if you used filters, chances are, it sounds borked on 6581.
So new SID is far more popular with composers for at least a decade or two, agreed. But there are still enough people who care enough to include a 6581/8580 detector and then adjust filter settings in Init, so it doesn't sound broken on 6581. And the more experienced composers are, the more they tend to do it if they think it's worth it. Also, there's a fistful of composers who stuck with 6581, either for traditional reasons or because of their own hardware. |
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spider-j
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 443 |
6581 has broken mixed waveforms and (kind of) broken filter – noone sounding like the other as already mentioned, and also that horrible crackling noise when you switch filters.
For me it wouldn't be fun to put work and effort into a tune knowing it may sound completely different as I intended at a party.
In 6581 land every SID seems to have different filters. In 8580 land only *one* SID has different filters: the one they use downunder at Syntax XD |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11107 |
heretic! |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5017 |
around 95-96 I sensed a revolution in sid music, before that I mostly knew late 80s SID music, apart from improved players this revolution in sound I experienced might be partly or greatly attributed to musicians moving to new sid. |
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anonym
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 247 |
Waz makes music exclusively for the 6581, too. |
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Laurent
Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 40 |
Quoting F7sus4It still doesn't help much since the filter offset discrepancies between each 6581 chip, even inside the same revision, are huge, to say the least. Indeed. Like I was saying above that kind of info could be embedded in the .sid if there was enough motivation to extend the header.
But that still doesn't solve the issue where the tune is played within a .prg or others by a c64 emulator.
The few bytes describing the SID model for that tune would have to be stored in the tune data and somehow passed to the emulated SID during player init.
That's feasible, but requires the SID emulators communities to discuss and specify this, together with other things like addressing multiple SIDs.
On emulators we could then play 6581 and 8580 tunes made without compromise within the same multi-part/multi-tunes demo.
Sadly this would not work on a real c64 with a single real SID. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2839 |
Quoting LaurentSadly this would not work on a real c64 with a single real SID. Which sort of is the only platform anybody should care for, no? =) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11107 |
Krill has leading |
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Laurent
Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 40 |
Of course :-P but there is still value to store info that describes the SID model that was used to compose the tune, and I believe the best place is in the player, which would prevent fiddling around with the emulator configuration. |
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Laurent
Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 40 |
Really, this is about improving things for the 6581. |
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