bassbinz

Thanks glitched. Your NES_SID is really inspiring. Good work. Right, so in between arranging tours for two of my three bands, getting to grips with the finer points of energyXT, and hanging on to a job, my first jobs here are to find an old desk to work on and buy some decent tools. I think I might set a record for the longest time between being a total novice to having my first MIDIBox SID, but I think I have the enthusiasm (and hopefully the support) to see it through. Watch this space...

Thanks Therezin, and hello. :) Advice overload suits me fine Wilba. I've already glanced at your soldering tips, among others. I'll be studying them in a detail once I get my temperature-controlled, narrow-tipped iron. A table, some chipboard, a soldering iron and lots of mess will amount to a workshop in my girlfriend's eyes! She'll be cool with it if I play her the MP3s of MIDIboxes in action (she's as much of a music nerd as me - just not quite as tolerant of junk). I'm away for a long weekend now ;D but I'll be pestering you all for more beginners tips next week. Cheers, Joe

Yeah, found it again thanks. This whole project looks too good to be true. I think if I had a working MB-6582 I'd never leave the house again!

As a newcomer I'm very excited to see this, and especially that it now works in energyXT. Hopefully version 1.0 will be ready by the time I've built my first MIDIbox. A note on Ableton, it's notoriously bad for MIDI routing. If you must use Ableton, you can still use energyXT in a VST shell within Ableton, and you should be able to route XT's MIDI out to your SID. Unless you work mainly with beat-matched audio loops (Ableton's undoubted strength), I'd seriously consider moving over to XT entirely. It's so much more flexible, although version 2 has yet to catch up with 1.4 in terms of features (Live Mode is still missing). Sorry for going off-topic. My main point is that I can't wait to start using SIDControl. Good work! 8)

Thanks for the welcomes Wilba, DavidBanner and nebula. Looks like I'll have all the support I need in what at first seems like an impossible task. It's heartening to think that in a year's time I might be among those giving out the advice. I think I'll start with reading up soldering and techniques to avoid contamination / static etc. I'll also have to break it to my girlfriend that I plan to use part of our spare room as a workshop. :o The SmashTV kit looks like the place to go after that. I have 3 C64s but it does seem wise to begin with a single SID module. Did I read somewhere that someone has made a VST MIDI controller? If I could control my first simple box in a VST environment that would be a dream come true, although a full tactile control surface is my ultimate goal. Okay thanks again, and expect to hear a lot more from me! Joe ps: that NES box looks superb!

Hello friends. I thought I should post a quick introduction - sorry if this is the wrong forum. Mods, feel free to move or delete this if it breaches forum etiquette. I've been a fan of SID music since the day I got my C64 at the age of 8. No other sounds move me as much as those classic arps or an awkwardly opening low-pass filter. The C64 has been part of my music-making arsenal for seven or eight years, especially a during the time I used GoatTracker and an audio cable taken from the DIN port (from what I remember). For convenience and speed of workflow, I've long since moved to emulators or sample banks, but recently I've become saddened to think of my 3 SIDs silently gathering dust. I was reminded of the SIDstation upon hearing about the untimely death of Daniel Hansson at Elektron, which galvanised my determination to get my SIDs singing again. I thought about going down the HardSID route, but those thoughts were blown out of the water upon learning of the MIDIbox SID. I found somebody selling MIDIbox SIDs on eBay at the same time I discovered this community. I have to be honest and say that the process of building my own MIDIbox SID would not be its own reward. I'm a musician, and an impatient one at that! BUT having read about the ethics of this community and the passion with which people discuss them, I'm under increasing pressure from my conscience NOT to buy one from eBay and to (gulp) make one instead. The thought of trying to build a MIDIbox SID terrifies me, not least because of the danger of wrecking my precious SIDs. Also I have terribly shaky hands. I did some soldering work on a Colour Gameboy a few years back and still have a scar on my arm (a fair price for an improved bass sound I think). That said, I think I'm going to give it a try, despite being 90% sure it will end in tears. Assuming somebody is still reading this, would you be kind enough to point me towards some beginner's tips, I mean real beginner's - assume I know nothing and you'd be pretty close to judging my level of expertise. Many thanks in advance, Joe