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Revision: 1.16
Committed: 2001-04-01T17:04:37Z (23 years ago) by cebix
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.15: +5 -1 lines
Log Message:
SDL version can output to WAV file

File Contents

# Content
1
2 SIDPlayer
3 A SID tune replayer
4
5 Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Christian Bauer
6
7
8 License
9 -------
10
11 SIDPlayer is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
12 See the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for details.
13
14
15 What is SIDPlayer?
16 ------------------
17
18 SIDPlayer is a replayer program for C64 music ("SID tunes"), like PlaySID on
19 the Amiga or SIDPLAY for Unix. You can think of it as being a stripped-down
20 C64 emulator that only emulates the CPU and the sound chip of the C64.
21 SIDPlayer can replay SID tunes in the "PSID" file format, but it cannot run
22 any C64 programs.
23
24
25 Why would I want to listen to C64 music?
26 ----------------------------------------
27
28 The C64 had the most advanced sound capabilities of all home computers in
29 the early 80's. While other computers of that time were only able to produce
30 beeps, the C64 had a complete 3-voice analog synthesizer on its MOS 6581
31 sound chip (called "SID" - "Sound Interface Device"). Even some more modern
32 computers (as the Atari ST or the first Macs) had worse sound.
33
34 The SID chip features three oscillators with selectable waveform, ADSR
35 envelope generators, programmable resonance filters and special effects like
36 ring modulation. With the aid of the CPU, it can also replay 4-bit sampled
37 sounds. SIDPlayer emulates all features of the SID chip, including the
38 filters.
39
40 There were (and are still) many composers programming excellent music for
41 the C64 and thousands of tunes have been converted for use with SID tune
42 replayers on nearly every existing computer platform. One big advantage of
43 SID tunes is that they take very little hard disk space: most are only 4-8K
44 in size.
45
46
47 System Requirements
48 -------------------
49
50 SIDPlayer runs on all Unix systems supported by SDL (which includes Linux,
51 FreeBSD, Solaris and Irix) and on BeOS R4.5 or later versions.
52
53 Successfully tested systems include:
54 - Linux/i386
55 - BeOS/x86 R5
56 - BeOS/ppc R4.5
57
58
59 Supported file formats
60 ----------------------
61
62 The only SID tune file format supported by SIDPlayer is single-file PSID
63 files (these have the signature "PSID" in the first 4 bytes). Most SID music
64 available on the Internet is in this format.
65
66
67 Installing SIDPlayer
68 --------------------
69
70 See the file "INSTALL".
71
72
73 Using SIDPlayer under BeOS
74 --------------------------
75
76 SIDPlayer can be started from the Tracker or from the Shell. If you give the
77 name of a PSID file as an argument from the Shell or drag a PSID file onto
78 the SIDPlayer icon from the Tracker, that file is loaded and played.
79
80 The SIDPlayer window displays some information about the currently loaded
81 PSID file and has the usual tapedeck-like controls for pausing, restarting
82 and stopping the replay and for selecting the next or previous song
83 contained in the PSID file. The number of the song currently playing and the
84 total number of songs in the loaded PSID file are displayed to the right of
85 the tapedeck buttons. The slider in the bottom right of the window can be
86 used to adjust the replay speed.
87
88 The SIDPlayer menu has three items:
89
90 - "About SIDPlayer" shows some information about SIDPlayer
91 - "Sound Control" opens the sound control window (see below)
92 - "Quit" quits SIDPlayer
93
94 To load another PSID file, drag it into the SIDPlayer window. To quit
95 SIDPlayer, close the window or select the "Quit" menu item.
96
97 Some functions of SIDPlayer can also be controlled with the keyboard:
98 P : Play/pause
99 S : Stop
100 N : Next song
101 Esc/Space : Stop
102 Left arrow : Previous song
103 Right arrow: Next song
104 Q : Quit
105
106
107 Using SIDPlayer under Unix
108 --------------------------
109
110 SIDPlayer currently only works as a command-line application. It is invoked
111 as follows:
112
113 sidplayer FILE [song_number]
114
115 "FILE" is the name of the PSID file to be loaded. The optional "song_number"
116 specifies the number of the song to be player (instead of the default song).
117 SIDPlayer cannot detect when a song has finished, so you have to use Ctrl-C
118 to quit it.
119
120 SIDPlayer accepts a number of command-line arguments. Type "sidplayer --help"
121 to get a list.
122
123
124 The Sound Control window (BeOS only)
125 ------------------------------------
126
127 Sound post-processing is controlled with the "Effect" pop-up menu and the
128 "Delay" and "Feedback" sliders. The available effects are "None" (no post-
129 processing), "Reverb" (simple reverb) and "Spatial" (reverb with phase
130 shift, intended for headphone users).
131
132 The checkbox labeled "Filters" is used to turn the emulation of the SID
133 filters on or off.
134
135 The "New SID Chip" checkbox selects the type of SID chip to be emulated.
136 Currently this only affects some combined waveforms.
137
138 The eight slider gadgets in the right part of the window control the stereo
139 panning and volume of each of the four voices (3 synthesized voices, 1
140 sampled voice).
141
142
143 Where do I get PSID files
144 -------------------------
145
146 The two largest collections of SID tunes are the "High Voltage" SID
147 Collection (http://hvsc.c64.org) and the "NemeSIDs" archive
148 (ftp://frodo.hiof.no/pub/c64/sidmusic). These have been used for testing
149 during the development of SIDPlayer and they should all work.
150
151 Twenty demonstration SID tunes are included with SIDPlayer in the "PSID
152 Demo" directory.
153
154
155 Support
156 -------
157
158 Updates of SIDPlayer are available on the official SIDPlayer home page:
159
160 http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SPMain.html
161
162
163 History
164 -------
165
166 V1.0 - First release
167 V2.0 - SID filter emulation, better envelope generation
168 V2.1 - Implemented notch filter, 60Hz replay now works, added faster/
169 slower buttons, compiled for BeOS DR8
170 V2.2 - Improved the 6510, triangle waveform is now 12 bits, output
171 clipping, stereo output, corrected SID sustain behaviour,
172 reading from a write-only SID register returns the last byte
173 written to the SID, combined waveforms sampled from a 6581R4
174 V2.3 - Corrected BRK, DCP, ARR and LAS instructions, volume levels up
175 to 200% possible, compiled for BeOS DR9
176 V2.4 - Shows name/author/copyright in ISO-Latin1
177 V2.5 - Converted panning/volume sliders to BSlider class
178 V3.0 - Unified PPC/x86 release
179 V4.0 - Now based on Frodo V5 CPU/SID code (more efficient CPU emulation,
180 post-processing effects (reverb, spatial), prefs manager), replaced
181 faster/slower buttons by slider, added popup menu and sound control
182 window, ported to BeOS R5 with new Media Kit, implemented CIA timer
183 speed control, and SIDPlayer can now also be used as a CL-Amp plugin
184 V4.1 - Runs as a command-line application under Unix (requiring SDL),
185 preferences items can be passed on the command line, and SIDPlayer
186 can now also be used as a SoundPlay plugin
187 V4.2 - Fixed writes to mirrored SID registers, output to WAV file is possible
188 in SDL version
189
190
191 Acknowledgements
192 ----------------
193
194 Special thanks go to Claes Löfqvist and Marco Nelissen for their help with
195 adding CL-Amp and SoundPlay plugin support.
196
197
198 Christian Bauer
199 <Christian.Bauer@uni-mainz.de>