** PD/Shareware / 281 words **

PlaySID v2.0
90%
MIDI/music
Shiuming Lai
Freeware
Separate Falcon and STe versions

** PSIDCOMP.GIF here **

Cream has been busy updating their neat Commodore 64 music player and since it was last reviewed it has gone through several revisions. The most obvious addition is a custom file selector, while internally, the replay routines have been improved to allow crisp 50KHz output on standard 8MHz STe machines, more accurate emulation of the SID chip and, for Falcon owners, some basic DSP surround effects. Tempo is now also implemented, and a rare STe hardware problem which causes crackling in the sound has also been worked around.
There's one new bizarre feature which requires a little explanation. PlaySID's internals consist of two main parts, the SID music file reader, and the actual sound chip emulator. Since this is a C64 music player, it makes sense to emulate the C64's soundchip but, as the sound synthesis is performed entirely in the digital domain, it can theoretically emulate any sound - and that's what the authors have done! PlaySID can now also play C64 music files using an emulation of, wait for it... the ST's own Yamaha YM2149!
With each release PlaySID gets even closer to the real thing, but perfect emulation will require using the Falcon's super-fast DSP to emulate the SID chip's filters; high quality real time digital filtering takes huge amounts of processing power. Apart from that, some video style transport controls for track access (SID music files typically contain a suite of tunes), and cue/review would be nice. I tell a lie, cue is implemented in the up arrow key - it's the "hidden" feature mentioned in the docs! Sssh...