MidiBox vs Alternatives?

[Duff]

Since I'm posting this on the midibox forum, I'm expecting a biased response, but I figured I'd ask anyway.

How does midibox compare to its alternatives?  It's alternatives being the VSTi plugin quadrasid and the PCI card hardsid, from what I've gathered (sidstation is way too expensive for me).  I don't know much about synth programming, so while I'm going to experiment and learn, the main reason I want a SID instrument is to be able to play the sounds from my favorite commodore 64 games right out of the box (or after assembly) -- I want to be able to play the theme from great gianna sisters or arkanoid straight from my keyboard.

The obvious advantage to the midibox is that I'd get to take on a fun project and learn a lot about electronics (I've never done anything like this before).  Is there anyone who has used more than one of the options I talked about that can say what the advantages or disadvantages to each option are in terms of getting the sounds from the c64 classics?  Or are they all essentially equal?

Thanks.

[Dave_Wheeler]

Hi Duff,

Trying to be as unbiased as possible  :) :)

I have never used either the hardsid or vst so cannot give realistic comments on performance.

If you have lots of money and want a plug and play solution one of them 'may' be a good option.

The Midibox SID does have some 'real' advantages. As the software is open source you have the opurtunity of creating a SID based instrument to do exactly what you want. The sound quality is down to the SID itself so any instrument that uses 'real' SID's will feature the SID quirks  :)

I think the Midibox SID gives more flexibility than anything else.

So at the end of the day, you pays your money and makes your choice !!

Cheers,

Dave