Authentic Chipmusic Soft Synth Emulation: Plogue Chipsounds Scoop from NAMM

You’ve heard the chip hype. But there’s something behind it: vintage digital chips can make wonderful sounds. And I’m thrilled that someone has painstakingly reproduced those sounds in an upcoming package.
Emulating analog circuitry, from amps to classic synths, has been long understood. But we’ve finally reached an age when people begin to appreciate the odd idiosyncrasies of digital technology, too. There hasn’t ever been a comprehensive attempt to emulate each detail of a range of 80s sound chips before – until now. Plogue (makers of the highly underrated Plogue Bidule patching environment) and David Viens have tackled just that as a labor of love, and you’ll be able to use the resulting “chipsounds” library later this spring.
Plogue’s chipsounds recreates the blippy personality of the Commodore 64, the Nintendo NES, the Game Boy, the Atari, the Vic20 – and circuit-bent and abused variations, too. It’s got a powerful artist endorsement from 8 Bit Weapon and Computer Her (pictured here). There are arpeggiators, noise patterns, distortion emulation, custom software, all built on the ARIA synth/sampling engine.
The basic specs:
- 7 chips: TIA, 2A03 PAPU, VIC-I, SN76589AN, AY-3-8910, POKEY, and SID. Haven’t heard of all of those? No worries. But you’ve probably heard the chips. The horribly-named SN76589AN was used in my very first computer, the IBM PCjr, my first game console, the Colecovision (boy did I pick them), and in the TI. The 2A03 is from the original NES. The TIA was in the Atari.
- Tricks, built in: One-shot arpeggiators, rapid waveform changes, envelope resync tricks are all built in – stuff that’s hard to pull off, as the creators note.
- Emulations of psuedo noise patterns, distortion
- Switch on each chip’s limited resolution and pitch values – or switch them off, and create sounds the PCjr couldn’t
- Presets from 8 bit Weapon and ComputeHer


How else to explain my inbox packed with tips about the new SID Player for iPod Touch and iPhone? Who needs MP3 when there’s SID. A tiny download yields over 33,000 tracks, and the player application itself is open source. Rounding out this (unplanned) day of game music, this seems the appropriate coda.











