The love for the Commodore 64’s SID chip continues unabated thanks to its warm 8-bit goodness which still evokes the feels, especially for those who had a C64 back in the day.
One of the latest additions to the SID love is the launch of SIDLab, a live DJ/remixing tool for the C64 which allows the remixing of SID music in real time.
If you’re lucky enough to have a real working machine, SID Lab works on that, or alternatively it can run through an emulator, of which the developer recommends Vice.
Due to the SID chip deriving its timing from the mains frequency, and that a lot of SID music was created in the UK and Europe, the developer recommends using a PAL system wherever possible, in order to have the songs play at the correct speed. Obviously this is far easier to change on an emulator than a real NTSC machine.
SID Lab is only an alpha version at present, with some features disabled, missing or unfinished.
Features include the ability to use one or multiple instances (with MIDI sync to follow soon), channel muting and volume change, FX plugins, positional panning on machines/emulators with two SID chips, song pitch shift, snapshot FX chains, and shuffle mode.
