The 6581 was designed by an engineer who wanted a real synthesiser inside a home computer, and it shows. Three oscillators, ring modulation and an analogue filter make it closer to a tiny polysynth than to the beepers of its rivals.
What makes it different
- An analogue filter whose cutoff drifts from chip to chip.
- Ring modulation and hard sync between voices.
- The famous volume-register trick that plays crude samples.
Every SID is a slightly different instrument. You tune the song to the chip, not the other way round.
Priya Sandoval
Emulators have become excellent, but anyone who has heard two real chips side by side knows each one sounds slightly different. That imperfection is half the charm.
JO
JONAS LECLERC
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Member since 2020
6 posts
Archivist of manuals, magazines and box art. Jonas scans at 600 dpi and will tell you why that matters.
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Good call on labelling every screw. I learned that the hard way.
Manual focus, shutter at 1/30 so it covers a full field.
We had one of these in the school library. Nobody was allowed to touch it.
My local repair cafe has a whole shelf of these waiting for volunteers.