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Revision: 1.3
Committed: 2000-09-18T22:41:23Z (23 years, 6 months ago) by cebix
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.2: +45 -30 lines
Log Message:
updated documentation

File Contents

# Content
1
2 SIDPlayer, Version 4.0
3
4 A SID tune replayer for BeOS
5
6 Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Christian Bauer
7 Freely distributable
8
9
10 License
11 -------
12
13 SIDPlayer is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
14 See the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for details.
15
16
17 What is SIDPlayer?
18 ------------------
19
20 SIDPlayer is a replayer program for C64 music ("SID tunes"), like PlaySID on
21 the Amiga or SIDPLAY for Unix. You can think of it as being a stripped- down
22 C64 emulator that only emulates the CPU and the sound chip of the C64.
23 SIDPlayer can replay SID tunes in the "PSID" file format, but it cannot run
24 any C64 programs.
25
26
27 Why would I want to listen to C64 music?
28 ----------------------------------------
29
30 The C64 had the most advanced sound capabilities of all home computers in
31 the early 80's. While other computers of that time were only able to produce
32 beeps, the C64 had a complete 3-voice analog synthesizer on its MOS 6581
33 sound chip (called "SID" - "Sound Interface Device"). Even some more modern
34 computers (as the Atari ST or the first Macs) had worse sound.
35
36 The SID chip features three oscillators with selectable waveform, ADSR
37 envelope generators, programmable resonance filters and special effects like
38 ring modulation. With the aid of the CPU, it can also replay 4-bit sampled
39 sounds. SIDPlayer emulates all features of the SID chip, including the
40 filters.
41
42 There were (and are still) many composers programming excellent music for
43 the C64 and thousands of tunes have been converted for use with SID tune
44 replayers on nearly every existing computer platform. One big advantage of
45 SID tunes is that they take very little hard disk space: most are only 4-8K
46 in size.
47
48
49 Supported file formats
50 ----------------------
51
52 The only SID tune file format supported by SIDPlayer is single-file PSID
53 files (these have the signature "PSID" in the first 4 bytes). Most SID music
54 available on the Internet is in this format.
55
56
57 Using SIDPlayer
58 ---------------
59
60 SIDPlayer can be started from the Tracker or from the Shell. If you give the
61 name of a PSID file as an argument from the Shell or drag a PSID file onto
62 the SIDPlayer icon from the Tracker, that file is loaded and played.
63
64 The SIDPlayer window displays some information about the currently loaded
65 PSID file and has the usual tapedeck-like controls for pausing, restarting
66 and stopping the replay and for selecting the next or previous song
67 contained in the PSID file. The number of the song currently playing and the
68 total number of songs in the loaded PSID file are displayed to the right of
69 the tapedeck buttons. The slider in the bottom right of the window can be
70 used to adjust the replay speed.
71
72 The SIDPlayer menu has three items:
73
74 - "About SIDPlayer" shows some information about SIDPlayer
75 - "Sound Control" opens the sound control window
76 - "Quit" quits SIDPlayer
77
78 To load another PSID file, drag it into the SIDPlayer window. To quit
79 SIDPlayer, close the window or select the "Quit" menu item.
80
81 Some functions of SIDPlayer can also be controlled with the keyboard:
82 P : Play/pause
83 S : Stop
84 N : Next song
85 Esc/Space : Stop
86 Left arrow : Previous song
87 Right arrow: Next song
88 Q : Quit
89
90 SIDPlayer can also be used as an input plugin for CL-Amp by Claes Löfqvist.
91 Simply copy the program to your CL-Amp "Plugins" directory (you have to copy
92 it, placing a link won't work) and rename it to "in_SIDPlayer".
93
94
95 The Sound Control window
96 ------------------------
97
98 Sound post-processing is controlled with the "Effect" pop-up menu and the
99 "Delay" and "Feedback" sliders. The available effects are "None" (no post-
100 processing), "Reverb" (simple reverb) and "Spatial" (reverb with phase
101 shift, intended for headphone users).
102
103 The checkbox labeled "Filters" is used to turn the emulation of the SID
104 filters on or off.
105
106 The "New SID Chip" checkbox selects the type of SID chip to be emulated.
107 Currently this only affects some combined waveforms.
108
109 The eight slider gadgets in the right part of the window control the stereo
110 panning and volume of each of the four voices (3 synthesized voices, 1
111 sampled voice).
112
113
114 Where do I get PSID files
115 -------------------------
116
117 The two largest collections of SID tunes are the "High Voltage" SID
118 Collection (http://hvsc.c64.org) and the "NemeSIDs" archive
119 (ftp://frodo.hiof.no/pub/c64/sidmusic). These have been used for testing
120 during the development of SIDPlayer and they should all work.
121
122 Twenty demonstration SID tunes are included with SIDPlayer in the "PSID
123 Demo" directory.
124
125
126 Support
127 -------
128
129 Updates of SIDPlayer are available on the official SIDPlayer home page:
130
131 http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SPMain.html
132
133
134 History
135 -------
136
137 V1.0 - First release
138 V2.0 - SID filter emulation, better envelope generation
139 V2.1 - Implemented notch filter, 60Hz replay now works, added faster/
140 slower buttons, compiled for BeOS DR8
141 V2.2 - Improved the 6510, triangle waveform is now 12 bits, output
142 clipping, stereo output, corrected SID sustain behaviour,
143 reading from a write-only SID register returns the last byte
144 written to the SID, combined waveforms sampled from a 6581R4
145 V2.3 - Corrected BRK, DCP, ARR and LAS instructions, volume levels up
146 to 200% possible, compiled for BeOS DR9
147 V2.4 - Shows name/author/copyright in ISO-Latin1
148 V2.5 - Converted panning/volume sliders to BSlider class
149 V3.0 - Unified PPC/x86 release
150 V4.0 - Now based on Frodo V5 CPU/SID code (more efficient CPU emulation,
151 post-processing effects (reverb, spatial), prefs manager), replaced
152 faster/slower buttons by slider, added popup menu and sound control
153 window, ported to BeOS R5 with new Media Kit, implemented CIA timer
154 speed control, and SIDPlayer can now also be used as a CL-Amp plugin
155
156
157 Christian Bauer
158 <Christian.Bauer@uni-mainz.de>