[m00dawg]

I know this is teetering on off-topic, but does anyone know of a ASID / Sidstation / Sidplayer application for OS X? Old versions of SIDPLAY seemed like it supported it, but I tried a few and could only find referenced to HardSID?

I'm looking for one so I can demo my MB-6582 to my local hardware group and I was going to start by jamming some SID tunes. Trouble is, my old portable laptop is an Apple so I either need to Bootcamp the thing (bleh) or figure out a way to play SID tunes via OS X. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated! I did a good bit of searching and, sadly, I think I'm SOL, but thought I would check with fellow MB-SID and Apple users just in case :)

[rvooh]

http://www.sidmusic.org/sidplay/mac/

[m00dawg]

Mmmk I appreciate the link, but:

Quote

I know this is teetering on off-topic, but does anyone know of a ASID / Sidstation / Sidplayer application for OS X? Old versions of SIDPLAY seemed like it supported it, but I tried a few and could only find referenced to HardSID?

Alas, the link you sent for SIDPlay which doesn't support Sidstation :(

[TK.]

Some time ago I hacked a selfwritten ASID player into SIDPlay for MacOS...
I planned to publish this version via the Author of this (great!) player, but he never answered to my email.

However, I will integrate this into the most recent source code and publish the binary on my own server... "for internal use only" ;)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[m00dawg]

Haha is there any need to be discrete? SidPlay is GPL'd so you could just fork it and make SidPlay++ or like SidTKPlay or something :)

I agree, the player itself is fantastic - having the ability to play SIDs through the MB-SID would be icing on top since I have noticed that, while it's really close, it's still not 100% accurate to my ears when simply emulating the SID. I'm sure filter choice, SID revision, etc. has a lot to do with that though.

Either way, I would love to "beta test" your internal project should you need any additional testers :)

[TK.]

Ok, it can be downloaded from this location:

http://www.ucapps.de...th_ASID.app.zip

SID tunes are played as usual, but in addition a virtual MIDI port will be opened (called "ASID Out") which has to be routed to a physical MIDI OUT port, e.g. with "MIDI Patchbay" from Pete Yandell as shown below:


Link to MIDI Patchbay:
http://notahat.com/midi_patchbay

Known issues:

• Pause button or application exit doesn't turn off the SID volume
  
• Sometimes hick-ups caused by the method I'm using to send the MIDI events - I could use timestamped events, but this will require some more work...

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[m00dawg]

:o

Dude and it's even in sync with the emulated SID output. That's absolutely fantastic TK! You just saved me a TON of work! Thank you very much! I hope you enjoy the beer! My hardware meetup folks too will really appreciate it as well! There's quite a few C64 enthusiasts that have been waiting months for me to finish my MB-6852 so I could show it.

Thanks again!

[TK.]

Great! :)

I will make this topic sticky - unfortunately Windows based applications are not released as "open source" (and I don't have tools to compile under Windows anyhow...), therefore this modification currently only exists for MacOS.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[m00dawg]

So I've been using TK's patched SIDPlay for a few days now and thought I would share my findings.

In short, it's freaking amazing! You have got to get this thing and start jamming out with it and your MB-SID!

In long, the implementation of the MIDI output is brilliant. ASID XP was flaky, even on simply things like context switches. It also was unable to play certain SIDs or would just refuse to play anything if I loaded certain SIDs in a certain order (such as the Metal Warrior SIDs). The patched SIDPlay, by contrast, has only crashed on me once, and that was due to a SIDPlay bug directly it seems (it crashed on making a smart playlist). I have had to restart SIDPlay but only on rare occasions. I would have to restart ASID XP almost constantly. It also has played pretty much every SID I have asked with generally extremely good output to the MB-SID.

You tack on this solid implementation to SIDPlay itself and end up with what I think is the best computer SID playing software.

Again, fantastically epic job TK!

[Smithy]

Thats great to hear guys!
Asid XP is quite flaky alright,
i have to use all sorts of tricks to get it to play tracks,
its funny how when the sound goes you can still hear the track at a ridiculously low volume.

Gyroscope.sid is one track that will always play no matter what,
it possibly resets the volume register, at the start of the track.

I feel like buying a mac now!

I guess the only real way of getting this to work on a PC is to install OSX X86 right?

[m00dawg]

Quote

I guess the only real way of getting this to work on a PC is to install OSX X86 right?

Yeah, unfortunately either buying the real deal or busting out a Hackintosh is the only way. Kinda sad that there isn't a decent player for the Winders folk. Linux has various options but none of them are able to output SIDs to the MIDI Sidstation format that I'm aware of.

So OS X it is for now, but I don't think you'll be disappointed :)

[vcfool]

Is this supposed to work with Tiger?
Says I can't open it with my version of OSX, so I am guessing that 10.5 is required.

[TK.]

I've compiled the application again with the "base SDK" in the hope that this helps.
Please try http://www.ucapps.de...th_ASID.app.zip

This version also supports the "Pause" button.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[vcfool]

Hey thanks!
I tried and it still doesn't work, but thanks again anyway.

[m00dawg]

Decided to bust this out again recently so I could jam to some SID tunes while working. On thing I was curious about, and it's sort of a daft request, but since it is not possible to play digital samples directly from the MB-SID, the next best thing would be to mute all but the digital audio on the regular computer out. That way, the normal SID channels are played via MIDI to the MB-SID but the digital samples from the computer. Sounds sort of weird but this way I'm not missing anything when jamming to SIDs since I can mix the MB-SID and computer out together.

Anyone have any thoughts about how to do that? I didn't see a way in SIDPLAY to mute channels?

[nILS]

SIDPLAY/W has a channel mixer that allows you to mute the channels. It's under View > Mixer. Dunno about the OSX version.

[m00dawg]

The OSX version has stuff in weird places it would seem. I was able to find the mixer by opening the info window (Command-I) and it has an option to mute the the 3 voices. I didn't have an option for digital in but I tested that by busting out some Turbo Outrun action. Seems to work like a champ! Also found out Jeroen Tel uses samples for the bassline too. Very clever!

[m00dawg]

Looks like this version might have compatibility issues with Lion in this version. Any chance you can give us a patch, TK? Or compile for the latest SIDPlay version?

[rumpelfilter]

I just downloaded the latest sidplay from the official website and it runs fine on osx lion. The only problem is that there seems to be no trace of the virtual midi port that was mentioned at the beginning of this post.
I'm wondering if the virtual midi port is only present in the unofficial builds...

[m00dawg]

rumpelfilter, on 08 December 2011 - 14:49, said:

I just downloaded the latest sidplay from the official website and it runs fine on osx lion. The only problem is that there seems to be no trace of the virtual midi port that was mentioned at the beginning of this post.
I'm wondering if the virtual midi port is only present in the unofficial builds...

Re-read this thread - you missed a very important detail ;)

The stock version of SIDplay doesn't support ASID output - the custom compiled version in this thread does, but that version (at least for me) gives me compatibility issues with Lion.