Commodore Free 22/Commodore_Free_Issue_22_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv stefano 2

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INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO TOGNON
SIDIN magazine Editor
http://digilander.libero.it/ice00/
 tsid/sidin/index.html

PART 2 of 3.

CF.   What motivated you to produce
such a magazine & give it away FREE?

ST. In the early months of 2002 the
C=Hacking magazine
http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/chacking

released the last issue. Maybe at that
time it was not known that other
issues will never be produced, but
from 1999 the magazine released only
one issue a year, instead of 3 like in
the previous years. C=Hacking contains
many fantastic articles about the sid
chip, so having to wait all this time
between issue numbers was a little
whipping from the point of view of an
enthusiastic reader (less from the
editor that had to write the issue
having little free time...I know
this..) At that time I had many music
routines reversed engineered near to
be completed, some came from ripping
games music, other just for seeing how
they were made. I was thinking that,
although C=Hacking articles would not
have been released, maybe some sid
users could appreciate them if I
released them in some way. This was
the birth of the SIDin magazine: its
goal to give sid people something that
looks at the inside of the sid:. It is
free as I wanted as many people as
possible to learn about sid
programming. I learned/ a lot from
C=Hacking & maybe if it was not free
I probably would have never read it.
(not for the price, but for the
opportunity to know about it). SIDin
is free as I hope that people will
want to contribute with their own
articles. Until now this is has not
happened, but if you have a reader
with something related to the sid that
came from your activities, don't
hesitate to contact me & we can
include it in the magazine. Your help
is welcome.

CF. Do you know how many people read
the magazine?

ST. No as I can't access to the
statistic of the web server that store
the SIDin site. However, I think that
there are at least 200 people read the
magazine (this is from the average
download link clicked at csdb). As a
side note, this is double the value of
readers I say to my friends for having
the permission to publish her photo
into the cover of the 11th number...
;) Another side note: number 4 was
read by Martin Galway & he spoke to
me about how it, this was a wonderful
moment for me :) Thank you Martin.

CF. Have you read Commodore Free &
what did you think

Yes, I have read every issue: it was
very exciting to have a new magazine
for the C64 pop up, & I don't miss a
issue I have even the first 3 "ghost"
numbers). I like to read the
interviews: you interview lot of
people related to the C64 world & it
is a good objective you give to the
magazine. The News section is a must
read: I always find some news that I
missed reading from the net. The
Internet is a fast way to get
informed, but it is very easy to miss
something & not be able to find
again even after just a couple of
days. This is the same thing that
makes me have a news section in SIDin:
to let people find important facts,
even if they are old in respect to
magazine's release date. I like
reading in Commodore Free, articles
related to Commodore hardware: I like
this very much. I would like to thank
you for creating Commodore Free
magazine that has had a big positive
impact to all the C= fans. I know how
hard is creating a PDF magazine &
having to release it each month (and
in many formats, not only in
PDF).Thank you :)

CF. What version is SIDin magazine in,
I recognise PDF, what is the other
versions are available?

ST. The magazine is in PDF for quick
view &/or print. But, as I'm an open
source person, I have released the
magazine in his native format:
Openoffice document. Old numbers are
saved into SXW (Star Writer format) is
the portable format that OpenOffice
used in his early years. The latter
are all saved into ODT that it is a
standard format for office suites, &
you can now open it with a large
number of (office related) programs.

CF. Have you thought about a Disk
image, of the magazine?

ST. Yes. Having a disk magazine that
talks about the sid & even letting
the reader listen to sid tunes while
reading is very good idea. But the
magazine cannot have all the listing I
put in SIDin & so it would need to
take a different approach for the
technical questions. This would be for
me, a very difficult & time
consuming task. I had wondered about
creating other C64 disk magazines,
with more soft argument, but the work
for starting that project was too much
(and I don't have actually a true disk
drive for testing magazine in the real
hardware)

CF. I see emulation plays a big part
of your Commodore usage, but do you
still utilise real hardware?

ST. I have now a great number of real
machines:
3 C64 (6581),
3 C64C (8580)
2 C128 (6581).
I still have my original C64 (that I
don't use to preserve it as much as
possible). One of the C64, old models
is broken but the sid chip is good. I
even have a commodore datasette & a
Commodore monitor. I always use the
real hardware for testing my
productions before releasing them.
This is an important phase, essential
especially for music creations. For
example for my "Evil" music that uses
some pc samples, I tested some
versions of it on the C64 (6581) & I
choose the one with a given volume
level of sample that sounds better on
the real hardware. Even the "Silent
Night" tune that uses a strong filter
for voice 3 (inaudible into a 6581)
was tested on a real C64C (8580), I
needed to be sure that the music
sounded good. However testing in real
hardware is a good choice for none
music related projects. I remember a
Vice 1.12 bug in the sprite emulation
that makes my MArkanoid game run ok on
the PC, but when I tested the game on
real hardware I found to my surprise
(that the sprites were totally wrong)!
Even in years to come as emulator
improve, if you are across-developer
like myself, always try your program
on real hardware. This is a good rule!
For e.g. if you don't have a real
machine for testing, then ask to a
friend to test the application on
theres. We are all here to help you :)


I use 2 of my C64C at the annual
Spresiano Retrocumputing meeting
http://nrgo.altervista.org/
where I realize/test programs with the
public look at all the development
phases. There are some images &
videos on that site of my hardware &
some images are on my website too.

CF.  What piece of Sid music do you
consider the most technical in terms
of musical content or the code used to
produce the track

ST. Good question & not simple to
answer...Before I give the real
answer, I would like to start by
showing you that the SID chip only has
3 sid voices (every musician that
composes with the sid chip has that
limitation). Go to listen to the
"Cover" tune of Phobos: it is very
simple musically & this is helping
me in showing you what I'm looking
for. You will hear from the start two
instruments are playing, you then
recognize that there are more than 3
instruments playing at the same time.
This is very common: you have to
program a voice of the sid for playing
more that one instrument by changing
timbre during the execution of the
timbre of another instrument: you
have, for example, a percussion sound
over a bass sound, but when listening
to it, you get the illusion that there
are two instrument playing the same
time. Just with this example we have
seen that every sid tune contains some
technicality , & we can describe
lots of other ticks used in all the
sid tunes (maybe if you listen to some
tunes from 1982-83 you think the tunes
are "poor" compared to tunes coming
after this date: this is because at
that time the sid was not programmed
to use all its capabilities).So, maybe
we can consider technical the tunes
that play (or try to play) speech that
has been generated by sid voices
(using ring modulation for example)
not by samples. Some examples of this
come from JCH with Triangles tunes but
there are other examples. Achieving
this is very complicated, but maybe
this has nothing musical it is an
imitation of a human voice.

So, if I have to choose one tune that
I consider the most technical in terms
of musical content, I would consider
"Parallax" by Martin Galway. It is a
cover, of course, but it has some
unique characteristics in instruments
and interpretation of the composition,
that make it very suitable for this
choice. The Next tune is "Driller" of
Matt Gray, due to his atmospheric
sound.

CF.  If you could change 3 things
about the sid chip what would you
change?

ST.
Point 1: removing the ADSR bugs. Those
bugs are extremely whipping. I think
that you have not known the sid chip
if you did not find those bug in
action. You write you music &
suddenly the voice is muted, without
any apparent reason!!

Point 2: making the filter a digital
part one, so all chips can sound the
same. The Filter is implemented by
analogical components & due to the
variable precision of how a resistor
is implemented into silicon (if you
study microelectronic like me you
already have the answer) every chips
sound different when using filter.

Point 3: maybe something like to have
a filter for each voice, or to have
more voices to use. Too difficult for
me to choose between the two cases...

CF. The Commodore sid chip seems to be
having a revival with new software &
hardware like the prophet 64, new
sound trackers & external sound
modules featuring the sid chip
controlled by modern sequencers. Why
do you think people are turning back
to the SID chip?

ST. Because sid sound is almost
unique! an irresistible sound...I
remember that in 1994 I was studying
the FM programming of the Adlib &
Soundblaster cards of a pc computer
for looking at how I could emulate a
sid chip using a modern chip. I was
shocked to see that with the FM
programming I was totally incapable of
achieving this task (this is even when
you could use samples (generated by
emulation of the chip) to reproduce
sid sound in sidplayer: using the
hardware capability of sound
synthesizers of the pc sound card was
almost a waste of time. I don't know
to much about the new sound cards
produced after 1995, but I think that
this hasnt changed).

Actually, a lot of external hardware
that hold a sid chip (and sometimes
even more that one) & with the
development of so many new programs
for programming the sid, composers can
have a fresh environment for producing
music that is a "modern way" of
creating sound. A modern way but with
the charm of an old chip...Maybe there
are still people who open a monitor
program on the C64 & find inserting
new ways for programming directly the
sid chip in a manner that was not used
25 years ago. But having a better
convent way of accessing the chip with
todays hardware/software lets more
composer be productive with smaller
effort, & so they are coming back to
sid music.

CF. Do you think the chip will ever be
produced again to cover the needs of
new SID users?

ST. This is a dream. I think the dream
of all C= user around the world The
fact that if one want to put a sid
chip into modern hardware, you have to
take a sid chip from a C64 is is very
depressing to me.. The same issue if
you want to replace a broken sid chip
in your working C64. There were some
rumours in the past that a big
quantity of Sid chip built for the
"upcoming" C65 computer where buried
somewhere after the Commodore
bankruptcy. This would be like finding
buried treasure or gold if it was
true! All our problems would be
ended..

However, returning to the initial
question, I was happy to see that
Tulip developed the C64 DTV & that
many people like Jeri Ellsworth &
others well known in the Commodore
community for there enthusiasm were
selected for that task. It seems that
the right way was chosen as the
Monster sid emulation of the Sid chip
could open the port for having future
Sid style chips to use. But we already
know how the story is going up
(especially for the people that I have
mentioned before that give their
energy without recognition) & the
new bankruptcy that is coming for the
holder of Commodore. This is,
unfortunate, even the business
politics that released a Commodore Mp3
player with lot of features, but not
with the ability to play a PSID file.
This is just ignoring the user base :(

With this in mind I don't think that
any future Commodore holder will
release a new sid chip :( even if they
had the original chip layout stored
into their archive (maybe some thing
to hold it!).

        CONTINUED IN PART 3