What do you think about Quadrasid?

Post by **Umbe78** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:57 am

Like in object ...
I have tried the demo 2 years ago but I wasn't much impressed ...
Maybe I want to give it a 2nd chance

Anyone uses it?

Anaki_Muon · Post by **Anaki_Muon** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:48 pm

I tried a demo too... but if you want that lofi sound, you might as well get a real C64 and Prophet64 for a little extra cash. I assume you'd get alot more out of it.

Pighood · Post by **Pighood** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:39 pm

Sounds pretty authentic. Can't beat the price, either.

Post by **Stab Frenzy** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:29 am

We use it, it's awesome! Only downside is there's no UB yet, so we can only run it on the old G4 Powerbook.

Bitexion · Post by **Bitexion** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 5:46 pm

No you don't wanna buy a C64 and Prophet64 instead. It is EXTREMELY much more cumbersome to work with, you have no MIDI interface (so no keyboard control).
QuadraSID gives you more or less exactly the same sound in a familiar MIDI environment. There is no Cubase for C64.

The great C64 musicians back in the 80's made their own monstrous assembler programs, and closely guarded their own programs from other musicians, because they each had their little secrets to the SID programming they wouldn't share with anyone else. AFAIK many of them made their own tracker programs, it wasn't like they had a secret source of presets in the SID chip everyone just tapped into. The best music was written for games, like the Last Ninja music.

desdinova · Post by **desdinova** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:24 pm

I'm not a big fan of the interface.

KLAXON · Post by **KLAXON** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:36 pm

Bitexion wrote:No you don't wanna buy a C64 and Prophet64 instead. It is EXTREMELY much more cumbersome to work with, you have no MIDI interface (so no keyboard control).

There is no MIDI control, but you can still have keyboard control in a sense. The C64 program "Music Maker" came with a two octave keyboard overlay with minikeys that gives you some keyboard control. (similar to microkorg style keys) Even without the overlay it is pretty simple, the top two rows of keys on the C64 keyboard act as the note keys and the paddle controls act as filter knobs. There are also some other programs for the C64 that are also synthesizers such as "Music Machine" produced by Commodore and the Cynthcart cartridge produced by Paul Slocum that both also work with the music maker overlay or without it using the top two rows of keys. So it is not "EXTREMELY much more cumbersome" it is actually quite easy.

Bitexion · Post by **Bitexion** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:02 am

How do you "record" what you make? Is there a tracker in these programs too? So you just enter in your notes one by one vertically, one cell equals one bar?

I know it's off-topic, but I remember typing in a Basic program that played a simple one voice song (southern states national song).
I spent a whole evening typing in numbers in DATA lines. Then there was a checksum at the top that calculated all the numbers against a value, to check if everything was correct. If I mistyped a single number, it would return an OUT OF DATA? error and I'd scour through the entire thing again to find the misplaced number

Of course that's not how Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish & Co worked. But they didn't use the Public Domain Music Maker either..I read an interview with Hubbard somewhere, sometime, and he said there was a fierce competition between the musicians (they all wanted to be hired for the big games of course), so fierce that they wouldn't share any code or software with eachother, since each had some nuances and tricks they played on the SID. They coded their music programs themselves to be in total control.
It's crazy how good music could be made with that little chip. I have a massive SID collection, the sound is just lovely and grungy.
And some songs are just classics on their own, great melodies, fat synth basses, searing lead lines (slow PWM was used alot).
And now that I know lots about subtractive synthesis, I recognize waveforms and effects in there too.

Check out these tracks:
http://sid.oth4.com/series/02/mp3/Antho ... r_6581.mp3

Great filter sweep here:
http://sid.oth4.com/series/01/mp3/Ben_D ... 2_6581.mp3

And my fave (awesome 16-note sequence)
http://sid.oth4.com/series/01/mp3/Ben_D ... 1_6581.mp3

Another great song, the Rambo First Blood II loading theme:
http://sid.oth4.com/series/03/mp3/Marti ... r_6581.mp3
These are MP3 recordings of the real SID songs.

XeemEyexoX · Post by **XeemEyexoX** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:46 am

I think it has potential to be fun, the "sad analog strings" patch is pretty rad! that is the most applicable sound i thought... the rest is too chippy for what i am currently working on. the price is stellar!

delon · Post by **delon** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:18 am

I own a HardSID and I did some A/B tests in the past against QuadraSID recreating patches. The QS sound is clearly inferior to a real 6581. It sounds cleaner but much duller, the 6581 sounds grainy but it cuts through your brain... Aliasing has never sounded so good...

On the downside, the HardSID GUI is, well, terrible. It works but very limiting and has its own twisted logic. The outputs are clean when compared to a C64 but the unpredictable nature of the 6581 generates some additional noise so prepare for some twiddling with gating. A new editor could solve both problems

KLAXON · Post by **KLAXON** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:33 am

Bitexion wrote:How do you "record" what you make? Is there a tracker in these programs too? So you just enter in your notes one by one vertically, one cell equals one bar?

Well, no. But the solution is incredibly simple. I just added 1/4" outputs to my C64 which I run out to my mixer so I can record what I play in real-time like I do with some of my other non-midi gear. Adding the outputs is really quite simple, I would think that even someone with very little or no soldering experience could do it. Here is a super link to many C64 mods to help optimize running audio programs on the C64.

http://www.bigmech.com/misc/c64mods/

Bitexion · Post by **Bitexion** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:46 am

And the SID is 4 notes multitimbral? Because most of the SID songs I have are 3-4 parts all at once. Bassline, blippy sequence, drumtrack, lead.
If they are not input as tracker files, how did they compose it and play it back?
Or is it really just one voice and a multiplexing technique that works so fast it sounds like all the sounds are played at once?

Damn this is off-topic, sorry

phloem · Post by **phloem** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:51 am

Bitexion wrote:...(bunch of cool SID recordings)...

Nice! It's good to see others appreciating the original masters, and crediting them. (Of the "Last Ninja" music, I like Reyn Ouwehand's soundtrack to "Last Ninja 3" the best.)

phloem · Post by **phloem** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:08 am

Bitexion wrote:And the SID is 4 notes multitimbral? Because most of the SID songs I have are 3-4 parts all at once. Bassline, blippy sequence, drumtrack, lead.
If they are not input as tracker files, how did they compose it and play it back?
Or is it really just one voice and a multiplexing technique that works so fast it sounds like all the sounds are played at once?

Damn this is off-topic, sorry

OT, bah. This is interesting. The SID is 3 voices max. (ocasionally samples are played back through it's fourth channel, not often though) The amazing thing about that SID music you recorded is that at any given moment there are only three oscillators making sound. Talk about working with limitations!

Say you have a song with the four parts you mentioned above, Bassline, blippy sequence, drumtrack, lead. One osc can handle the Bass, another can handle the lead, and the third can handle the drums and blippy sequence. Of course any of the oscillators can do any job. I mean, if the lead part ends, than that oscillator can take over another sound. Or, two or three oscillators can be used in unison, or sync. Try and get a minimoog to do that, eh?

KLAXON · Post by **KLAXON** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:16 am

phloem wrote:
Bitexion wrote:And the SID is 4 notes multitimbral? Because most of the SID songs I have are 3-4 parts all at once. Bassline, blippy sequence, drumtrack, lead.
If they are not input as tracker files, how did they compose it and play it back?
Or is it really just one voice and a multiplexing technique that works so fast it sounds like all the sounds are played at once?

Damn this is off-topic, sorry
OT, bah. This is interesting. The SID is 3 voices max. (ocasionally samples are played back through it's fourth channel, not often though) The amazing thing about that SID music you recorded is that at any given moment there are only three oscillators making sound. Talk about working with limitations!

Say you have a song with the four parts you mentioned above, Bassline, blippy sequence, drumtrack, lead. One osc can handle the Bass, another can handle the lead, and the third can handle the drums and blippy sequence. Of course any of the oscillators can do any job. I mean, if the lead part ends, than that oscillator can take over another sound. Or, two or three oscillators can be used in unison, or sync. Try and get a minimoog to do that, eh?

Haha, good explaination. I am bad at explaining things and was trying to figure out how to word it. You covered it pretty good though. When ever one part shuts off momentarily, that osc becomes available for other parts which is why it can sound at times like more than 4 multitimbral parts. When there is a brief gap in the bassline, for example, that osc can than be briefly borrowed to sound a kick before the bassline would kick back in. This is why it can sound like there is more parts playing, but in actuality there is only 3 or 4 playing at any given time.

Of course, in this modern age, I simply just cheat. I record my tracks either one or two (sometimes three) part multitimbral into my DAW then chop them up and rearrange each hit or phrase and repeat the process. In the end it ends up sounding like a super intricate 10+ part multitimbral sequence. (gotta love modern technology

)