The instrument
SIDSynth captures the spirit of the SID — pulse, saw, triangle, noise, sync, ring, and a filter with a personality — then gives those ideas modern polyphony, MIDI expression, and a patch system that can travel.
A cycle-accurate emulator tries to reproduce one chip, including its timing quirks and board-to-board drift. That is the right tool for restoration. SIDSynth is the other tool: waveform mathematics and DSP inspired by the same behaviors, free of the original voice count and control limits.
| SIDSynth | Hardware emulation | |
|---|---|---|
| Best at | New music, performance, and sound design | Matching a particular SID board |
| Voices | Modern poly, mono, and legato, with three oscillator layers | Bound to the original architecture |
| Consistency | The same sound on every machine | Chip and host variation is part of the charm |
| Trade-off | It will not clone every analog accident | Less room to extend the instrument |
Each oscillator has pulse, saw, triangle, and noise, its own envelope, tune, pan, and LFO. Pulse width can move on its own sine, separate from the pitch LFO. Voice mode is poly, mono, or legato, and portamento rate is a performance control rather than a hidden SID trick.
Hard sync and ring modulation stay available, but they are choices. The cookbook's first warning is the right one: do not switch both on just because they sit near each other.
Choose a Layer or SID voice model, then a 6581 or 8580 character. Low-pass, band-pass, high-pass, and notch can be enabled independently, each with cutoff, resonance, drive, and automation. Oscillators route into the filter instead of being trapped behind one global switch.
The shared filter envelope opens the cutoff on the newest note and settles back. That is the quack in a bass, or the slow bloom in a pad, without a second synthesizer.
Attack, decay, sustain, and release, with separate depth for each filter path. Positive depth brightens as the envelope rises.
Latch a chord and let it climb, fall, or walk. Rate follows the host tempo, with gate, swing, octaves, and step length.
Watch oscillator 1, 2, 3, or the combined voice while you edit. It is a tuning tool, not a decoration.
Velocity, aftertouch, pitch bend, sustain, and the mod wheel are switches, not assumptions. The mod-wheel map assigns depth and invert per destination: filter cutoff, resonance, drive, oscillator volume, pulse width, tune, and LFO rate.
Tempo sync copies an exact note-rate in hertz onto any tempo-sensitive control, including dotted and triplet values. Line noise can add 50 or 60 Hz hum, and speaker overdrive adds a small cabinet edge. Both ship off in banks built by the librarian.
A single patch is one oscillator voice. A multi is a complete instrument: up to three oscillators, the filter, effects, and the performance map. Sixty-four singles and sixty-four multis fit in one .sidbank.
Registration unlocks bank load, bank save, and patch writing. Until then you can still audition the factory sounds and build a custom bank in the librarian, ready for the day the license arrives.
sidsynth