Call it the 8-bit preservation society. Chipsounds is now available. It’s a new programmable soft synth, filled with custom oscillators and samples of famous and obscure vintage chips, accompanied by an EP of free chip tracks. Far from a threat to fans of hardware, I think this release is a major achievement for fans of digital sounds.

Oh yeah, and if you’ve been feeling burnt out on chip music in general, firing up some of the sound of some of these more obscure chips could well change your mind. If you like sound, there’s something here for you.

Chip music, championed by a supportive network of artists and fans, has unquestionably made the big time. But for those who value the unique sounds of a variety of vintage 8-bit chips, there is still cause for concern. Even though they’re digital circuits, the unique design of various chips won’t last forever. Some chips are simply disappearing, while others cease to work. At the same time, while the sound of the Nintendo game system has become ubiquitous, lots of other unusual chips don’t get heard. Software emulation and sample packs so far have been pretty shallow. Emulators tend not to model all the nuances of different chips, and samples are really only expressive if they’re presented in the context of something that’s fully programmable and playable.

Enter Chipsounds. Creator David Viens told us about the Chipsounds project back in January:
Authentic Chipmusic Soft Synth Emulation: Plogue Chipsounds Scoop from NAMM

It’s available today, with an introductory price of US$75 ($95 thereafter).

chipsounds @ Plogue [Product Page]

Something like Chipsounds could have been just an attempt to cash in on “what the kids are playing.” But David’s work is more like an epic love poem to the sounds of chips themselves, not only as a reminder of game music but as a unique sound source. And the passionate chip music community got in on the act, as well, with notable artists contributing to the product’s development and in fine form on the EP.

But forget about that for a second. What matters is that chipsounds is an exhaustive, exhaustively programmable set of sounds that almost no eBay budget could ever amass. It takes some unique sounds and allows you to warp them into arrangements and performance configurations not possible with hardware. And it might well make you explore hardware in a new way all over again.

For your listening pleasure, here is the full, free EP with downloadable tracks to set the mood. It’s all been made with Chipsounds by some terrific artists, including David Viens himself, and covers a range of genres and techniques.

Why Chipsounds

David has a really lovely intro in the manual for the tool. He’s got a story like many of us I expect have.

My father bought a Commodore VIC-20 for me and my brother when I was around nine. After a few days with it, I guess he knew I had found my calling. There is not a year that passes without me reminding him how bringing that computer home some cold autumn night changed my life.

But this isn’t just nostalgia. David also notes that some of the limitations imposed by earlier 8-bit hardware caused artists and musicians to invent new techniques that were later lost. These methods can now be rediscovered and coexist with new processes only possible with newer tech. What Chipsounds represents is an expanded “sonic palette,” not just the literal representation of the hardware included. And for those willing to dig into programming the sampling instrument itself, that palette can be even wider and more personal.

David did a whole lot of work on research and experimentation to make this work, but also drew upon the massive community online. Here’s a look at the chips included.

The Instruments

David did extensive research, testing, sampling, and A/B sound programming for the project. Just going through the chips is a nice history lesson – and could be a good introduction for those interested in working with hardware, too. You can check out extensive technical details on the hardware at the chipsounds blog.

SID (6581) and (8580) It’s the mother of all sound chips, and deserves the top space in this list. The SID was the legendary Commodore 64 chip, sampled in this collection at 96KHz. The 8580 I think doesn’t get nearly enough credit, so it’s nice to see both so you can hear the oddities of each.

RP2A03 (NTSC) and RP2A07 (PAL) and RP2A0X (unlimited): This is the big one – the chip in Nintendo’s NES and Famicom. It’s not actually a dedicated audio IC, but a clone of the 6502 CPU, but it still has some unique features and sounds.

DMG-CPU, SGB and DMG(unlimited) The classic: Nintendo’s own sound generator for its Game Boy handheld. Confession time: I’ve heard this chip so much that I’m starting to long for other things. But again, because the Chipsounds collection lets you create hybrid instruments in different ranges, there’s nothing stopping you from inserting DMG sounds where you wouldn’t expect. (And while functioning Game Boys are everywhere and run a variety of amazing homebrewed sequencing software, some of these other chips aren’t as accessible or portable.)

AY-3-8910 (various clocks sources), YM2149 (2Mhz): General Instruments’ sound chip was one of the great sound chips of the 8-bit gaming and computing age, found in the Intellivision, Vectrex, Atari ST, and Sinclair ZX, among many others. That means it’s critical not only to gaming fans, but also fans of the sounds in early tracking musicians, particularly on the Atari ST. It’s even got its own Wikipedia article.

D1867G The classic Casio VL-1 makes a surprise cameo in this collection. Result: you have the opportunity to imagine your own music console that combines the sounds of the VL-Tone with the IBM PCjr, and that’s a beautiful thing. The VL-1 may be the odd man out in this collection, but then, it also exemplifies the lo-fi digital sound of the 80s – and with the ARIA sampling engine, you can warp it to do things it has never done before.

P8244 (NTSC), P8245 (PAL) This is one of the rarer (or at least more unexpected) entries in the collection, the sound chip that drove the Magnavox Odyssey2. Intel’s Video Display Controller used this chip to make both graphics and sound (hmmm… could Chipgraphics be next?) For extreme nerding out, check out David’s full post on working with this chip. Unlike the other entries here, the VDC doesn’t have much documentation online for these kinds of applications.

POKEY (various clock configuration) Atari’s Doug Neubauer created sound capabilities for this chip, used in Atari’s 8-bit computers as well as many arcade games. (The POKEY actually handled not only audio, but keyboard, pots, timing, serial… Arduino fans, take note.) Which arcade games? Try Tempest, Gravitar, Gauntlet and Crystal Castles, for starters.

TIA (NTSC), TIA (PAL) and TIA (unlimited) Another combined graphics and sound chip, the Television Interface Adapter was the sonic soul of the Atari 2600. The variations here in Chipsounds give you a lot of choices, including the awesome “polynomial counters” which create different kinds of distortion. Using keyswitching, you can choose among these sounds live, ideal for keyboardists. And David has even included the sounds the TIA makes when the cartridge was improperly inserted.

SN76489(AN) (various clocks) Here’s my personal favorite: the classic Texas Instruments sound chip was dead-simple (three square wave generators and one white noise generator), but elegant, efficient, and unique in sound. The BBC Micro, IBM PCjr, and ColecoVision game system all used its sounds. I can still hear the echoes of Subroc in my sleep. (Yeah, okay, I was a bit jealous of my friends who had Apple IIs and NES instead of the more oddball PCjr and Coleco I had, but now I’m older and appreciate them more.)

Side note: David was nice enough to share some of his SN chips, so I’m working on building them into standalone hardware and will share the results.

UVI 2637(NTSC) and 2637(PAL): Now we get into the chips you probably haven’t heard. Signetics made this chip for the Arcadia 2001 console developed by Emerson (yeah, the electronics company) in the heady year of 1982, before the meltdown that would purge the home gaming market. That console was widely cloned, under names like the Interton, Leisure Vision, and MPT-03.

VIC-I : 6560 (NTSC) 6561(PAL) in various configuration Here’s another oddball chip: the VIC-I, used in the VIC-20, had 7-bit pitch range, giving you oddly-tuned scales, plus a truly strange noise generator. That strange sound is rarely heard, but leave it to the demoscene to exploit it. From the Chipsounds manual:

In 2003, a brilliant demo writer by the name of Viznut reverse-engineered this side effect, mapping all possible “weird” waveforms that the chip was able to reproduce in a deterministic manner, and put the to good use in his now famous “Robotic Liberation” demo.

Here’s a look at that creation:

The Software

Let’s get something out of the way: I believe in synths. I’m naturally skeptical of samples. If I believed for a second Chipsounds was about plugging in some sampled sounds and hitting a key and waiting, I wouldn’t have posted this article. Fortunately, Plogue’s ARIA sampling-plus-synthesis engine is powerful enough to allow immense programmability and playability. It’s loaded up with programs that model every last detail of these instruments, while also providing the possibility to create your own, unique performance configurations. Samples make up just a portion of the sound, used where appropriate, with lots of custom oscillators and modulators, as well. This is really a full-blown instrument, not just a sample library. (ARIA has previously been sampling-only, but Chipsounds is the first of a line of instruments to use synthesis, as well.)

Standalone, plug-in modes:

As a plug-in, Chipsounds works with VST on Mac and Windows, RTAS (for Pro Tools) on Mac and Windows, and Audio Units on Mac. And of course, in plug-in mode you can automate all your parameters.

In standalone mode, you have additional features: audio file recording, MIDI file playback, and even the ability to render MIDI to audio directly.

Mixing, Multis:

• Load up to eight chips/instruments per instance. (Each of those, in turn, can be made up of combinations of samples.) Maximum polyphony is suggested at about 4-5 voices for artistic reasons, but… rules are made to be broken, right?
• Assignable tuning, polyphony, mix parameters
• Reverb busing
• Key switching, which allows you to change between waveforms immediately using a key on your keyboard
• Snapshots

Sound editing:

Here’s where things get fun – and where you can do things more easily than you could with the original hardware. Even with the ARIA engine alone, you have a virtual studio of tools in which to place your samples.

• Arpeggiator for pitch, velocity: with configurable range, loop modes, gate, sync, etc.
• Wave sequencer: This allows you to sequence lists of pitches on an instrument, allowing tracker-style events inside the software. (Add your own tracker to the mix and – well, things get pretty hectic.)
• Live, high-performance oscilloscope.
• Pitch LFO (currently fixed), pitch and amplitude envelope generators.
• Effects, which currently includes only an ARIA-native port of the lovely Ambience reverb by Magnus Jonsson. (But then, the advantage of having these sounds on your computer is easy access to all your other effects.)

Still Want Hardware?

In order to make the Chipsounds collection, David spent time rigging quick hardware devices allowing the actual chips to be connected to a computer. That could make Chipsounds an affordable gateway drug into building your own standalone hardware with these chips as sound sources, as I hope to do soon with my TI SN’s. To get you started, check out the superb resources on the Midibox wiki:

Midibox SID
Midibox POKEY
MIDIbox AY 3 8912

The SID is the most common of these, but ironically finding working SIDs is getting to be much harder than finding these other unique, lovely chips.

I’m actually really interested in the possibilities of combining hardware with the open-source Arduino platform and creating devices that behave in new ways; stay tuned, and hopefully we can get a group of folks working on that.

One example – our friend little-scale aka Sebastian Tomczak of South Australia – has used the Arduino to connect to the SN chip and create a MIDI-controlled Sega Master System equivalent:
MIDI + Arduino + chip on little-scale’s blog

Add in new MIDI capabilities on the Arduino, and this gets quite interesting.

The Artists

A lovely collection of artists contributed to the EP and to the development of the software, so this is very much a release connected to the community. (David’s own music is on the EP, too.)

The artists:
8Bit Weapon
Computeher
nitro2k01
Chupathingy and on MySpace
James Mireau
XC3N
shrimps

And for more on the making of one of the tracks, GameBoy Genius aka nitro2k01 has documented the work of translating a hardcore chip track from Game Boy to computer, using Renoise. This is a pretty traditional approach to what to do with chip music, but on the other hand, once you’re in the world of Renoise, you could go in other directions, as well.

If you’re interested in anything covered here – the artists, the chips and digital synthesis history, how to use the software, or how to make some of these hardware creations – all of these topics are fair game for CDM. I promise a non-nostalgic (okay, maybe slightly nostalgic), musical approach to these topics.

In the meantime, let us know what you think of the software.

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

When analog synth emulation came out, we all got something more convenient, but it didn’t necessarily do wonders for the music. Here, I think the situation is very different. Many of the original chip instruments have woefully primitive possibilities for actual composition. (The Game Boy’s wonderful LSDJ and Nanoloop are a notable exception.) Compare that to the software emulations of, say, a Moog modular, which lost a lot of what was great about the original – the interface. You can’t necessarily say that about the AY-3-8910, unless you’re the Ludwig van Beethoven of Assembler. (If you are – we love you.)

And the chip scene has also matured to the point that it’s ready to break out a bit. Getting these emulations on computers can help warp them into music and sound ideas they haven’t discovered before. I believe these sounds are really something special, not just a novelty.

I personally can’t wait to use this.

We have extensive details from a Plogue flyer – you can get it here on CDM, or if you’re on the floor of NAMM, you might get it from the Plogue guys themselves.

Flyer – Front

Flyer – Back

And if you want to hear these sounds making fantastic music, go give the artists a listen:

8 Bit Weapon

Computeher

ARIA is an important announcement; I’ll be catching up on news from Gary Garritan soon.

We’ll have sound samples of this too, as well.

One chip to rule them all: over a quarter century later, the sounds of this chip are reborn in the newest mobile devices. Photo (CC) Dejdżer / Digga.

Take a look at the long view of history, and the Commodore 64 fares nicely. It remains the most popular computer of all time. And this newfangled iPhone thing? Well, it now just catches up to the C64, giving people what they really want – a C64-like music player in their pocket.

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.

Now, it’d be easy enough to let a wave of nostalgia wash over you – or, Scrooge-like naysayers, to dismiss yet another novelty download for iPhone. But consider if you will some of the underlying reasons a SID Player works:

• Composition: The compositions aren’t just nostalgia pieces – even classic game tunes like Commando and Arkanoid. The point is, composers like Rob Hubbard were inventive and ingeniously compact. Strip away the instrumentation, and they still work – something that can’t be said of a lot of modern game music (but can be said of hits like “Still Alive,” as it happens).
• Storing scores, not sound: We continue to be force-fed the idea that recorded music is superior to sequenced racks that are synthesized – but no one can say why. Sure, for simulating an orchestra, that makes some sense, even with increasingly sophisticated samplers. But for electronic compositions, it’s nonsense. You can pack more music and more musical structure into a score. If MIDI scores are underwhelming, it’s because the synths playing them, or the limitations of the file format, or both killed the idea.
• SID forever: The SID remains one of the great synth designs of all time, again, because of its economy and its personality. There’s no reason that success can’t be replicated in 2009 by DIY electronics builders on one hand, or smart synth programmers working on mobile and embedded devices on the other.

I have nothing against nostalgia on the one hand, and nothing against healthy skepticism on the other. But if you look at something like a 2009 SID player on the iPhone, there really is something to it – even when history washes both the SID and the iPhone into a forgotten past.

SID Player Project Page, iTunes link (US$2.99; further evidence that you can have a for-fee open source mobile app, folks)

Via Synthtopia and James Lewin’s Twitter and a few of you, as well.

The only way to top this iPhone app? Why, someone needs to build a SID-based pocket music player that does nothing else. There are a few DIY projects that might get you started.

basic64 is a free (donations accepted) VST plug-in for Windows. You can see the full specs on the developer site, but let’s skip straight to what sets this one apart:

• Oscillator sync
• Ring modulation
• Pitch envelopes
• Tempo-synced arpeggiator
• MIDI learn on everything

Pretty powerful for free. It’s not a full SID emulation, but then, I think an “inspired” version is better anyway. Now, enough blogging, I’m off to go play with this thing. And yes, lots of weird and wonderful plug-ins is one excellent reason to use Windows, even if just a justification for throwing XP Home on Boot Camp on a MacBook.

basic64 on de La Mancha
and lots of other free/donationware plugs from them

Via the good peoples of Sonic State

I’m busy finishing — count them — 5 feature stories at once today (coffee, please?!), so that means it’s time to check in on the rest of the blogosphere.

It’s “I love the 80s” time again on this week’s Best Music Blog. Words cannot describe the geeky goodness of the new Commodore 64 Music Blog. That’s right, it’s C64 music all the time: 24/7. And you thought the Bass Fishing Network on cable TV had a focused audience.

Believe it or not, aside from pointing to lots of cool gear, modern musicians devoted to the C64, and bizarre vintage toys like the C64 Sound Sampler, the blog actually has some useful advice — like using a spare C64 as a MIDI monitor or rack-mounting it as a synth. Start hitting the yard sales, because at about $10 it’s hard to find a better music bargain.

Previous C64 coverage here on CDM:

C64 as a PCI card for your PC/Mac

C64 in VST form

C64 Synthesis, Revisited

Roland Emulated on Commodore Emulated on Mac

See also: W. Brent Latta on oldskool game music as art

CDM Exclusive: Reflexaudio tells us that they’ll be manufacturing the HardSID Quattro PCI card, a PCI card featuring authentic vintage SID chips as used in the original Commodore 64. (European readers may be aware the HardSID product has been available over there for a while, but Reflex will bring manufacturing and broader North American distribution.) Pop this into your Windows or Mac desktop computer, and you can run four of these mean analog-style synth chips simultaneously with full MIDI control. Why? Aside from being able to make C64-style game music with incredible accuracy (if you’re into that sort of thing), you’ll find the SID is a very capable synth instrument for all sorts of music — something you might not guess from middling software emulations.

Compatibility: Windows / Mac OS X; PCI slot
Availability: June 30 (estimated / unconfirmed)
Cost: Estimated at US$250 starting retail (with one installed Commodore SID)

History and — why do I want to do this again? Did you say C64?! Click ‘read more’ for a look at the history behind the Commodore 64’s synth, and how and why this ancient digital chip wound up on a PCI card for modern computers.

A little bit of history

It’s January 1982, at the Winter CES show. Most computers (like the Apple II and IBM’s new PC 5150) can produce only a single, awful beep. The brand-new Commodore 64 is different: C64 architect Bob Yannes’ “synthesizer on a chip,” the original MOS 6581, is a complete analog-style synth, with three great-sounding voices and an integrated filter bank; it can even synthesize speech. The C64, designed from chips originally intended for the gaming market (the SID chip itself was intended as an all-in-one sound chip for gaming), is also a fraction of the price of the IBM PC. Contrary to popular belief, it’s the C64, not the Apple II or IBM PC, that will go on to become the best-selling computer in history. History links:

commodore.ca’s extensive C64 history
History of sidplayer, popular C64 music software, including a SID timeline

What’s this C64 doing in my modern [xx] PC?

The “why” aside, the “how” is simple: enough C64s were sold that there are still a fair number of these now-discontinued chips floating about. The cult following around the SID’s distinctive sound has led to plenty of DIY hardware projects (see CDM’s roundup) and even the boutique commercial product Sidstation (see MusicThing) The original MOS 6581 chip is in short supply, but there are more of the 8580 chip used in the C64’s revision, the C64c; Reflexaudio tells us that, while they were skeptical at first, the later chip is actually an improvement.

So, long story short, Reflexaudio isn’t just building a new card: they’re using the actual chips from the C64. This ain’t no emulation. The 8580s and a handful of 6581s are available unused, and the HardSID card even includes extra jumpers and capacitors so you can rip one out of a garage-sale C64 (provided you can find one with a sound chip that works).

Why would you want to do this? The SID’s cult following may be that it is something of an oddity: one of the first musical antiques from the digital age. It’s not only a good instrument for chiptune folks, but is capable of producing some great bass sounds and rich, fat bleepin’ analog sounds. When these chips are gone, it’ll just be you with your C64 synth in your — boy, this sounds strange — dual-Pentium or G5 tower. Stay tuned to CDM for an official availability announcement from Reflex and final pricing and ship dates.