SIDId (cadaver/sidid): the player-signature list and its notes

The tool HVSC and DeepSID use to say which player a SID file runs in. Its config is a list of byte patterns per player name; its .nfo is a terse who-wrote-what with release years and CSDb links — the most compact reference the wiki has for naming C64 drivers and editors consistently.

Key claims#

Naming (from sidid.cfg): a name per player, sub-variants in parentheses. Relevant entries: Soundmonitor with (MusicMaster_1), (MusicMaster_2), (MusicMaster_TMM), (Digitronix), (Huelsbeck_Digi_V1), (Huelsbeck_Digi_V2); Chris_Huelsbeck; TFMX, TFMX/MasterComposer, TFMX/TimeComposer; Matt_Gray with (Andrew_Rodger); MoN/Deenen with (MoN/Cyb2), (MoN/TTWII), (MoN/JTS), (MoN/RWE), (MoN/Bantam), (MoN/Deenen_Digi); MoN/Bjerregaard, Bjerregaard, MoN/FutureComposer with (FutureComposer_V1.0); Noise-Mon_V2; Rob_Hubbard, (Rob_Hubbard_Digi), Paradroid/HubbardEd, Jason_Page/RobTracker; Martin_Galway, Martin_Galway_Digi; JCH_OldPlayer, JCH_NewPlayer (variants V1–V20), JCH_Protracker, JCH_DigiPlayer; Vibrants/Laxity, Laxity_NewPlayer_V21, SidFactory/Laxity, SidFactory_II/Laxity; Ariston, Electrosound, Master_Composer, Ubik's_Musik, SoedeSoft, DefMon, GalBard/ATOO, MicroRhythm, Companion.

Notes (from sidid.nfo):

• Soundmonitor — author Chris Hülsbeck, "RELEASED: 1986 64'er/Markt & Technik", "Released as a type-in listing in the October 1986 issue of the German C-64 magazine 64'er"; (Digitronix) by Ronald A. Brockmann (RAB), 1988, The Lightning Duo (the lineage file says 1987 — s-soundmonitor-lineage-wikis).
• TFMX — "The Final Musicsystem eXtended (TFMX)", Chris Hülsbeck, released 1988; TFMX/MasterComposer by Playboy & Sir Tippitt, 1990, Bierfront, "Editor that is based on the player of /MUSICIANS/H/Huelsbeck_Chris/Starball.sid"; TFMX/TimeComposer by Oliver Hoeller (Rhodan), 1990.
• Matt_Gray; (Andrew_Rodger) — "A modified version of Matt Gray's player", 1990.
• Names for the drivers read from source on 2026-08-30 (sidid.cfg, with the sidid.nfo notes where they exist): David_Whittaker; Paul_Hughes and MusDriver/Paul_Hughes — "Music Driver", author Paul Hughes, "More info about the player: http://www.pauliehughes.com/page22/page22.html" (no Jonathan_Dunn entry); Fred_Gray; Jeroen_Kimmel; FAME — Adam Bulka, "1988 F.A.M.E.", "Player used by the group F.A.M.E. (Fallacious Antrophoid Music Entertainment)"; Audial_Arts — "Zong Player", François Prijt, "Player used by the group Audial Arts", with (Audial_Arts_Digi), Audial_Arts/Cody and Audial_Arts/Cody_Digi; Bjerregaard, MoN/Bjerregaard, (Bjerregaard) — Johannes Bjerregaard; Martin_Galway, Rob_Hubbard as above.
• MoN/Deenen — Charles Deenen; MoN/FutureComposer — "Charles Deenen made the player & Juha Granberg (FCS) made the editor", "Editor made for the player of /MUSICIANS/T/Tel_Jeroen/Noisy_Pillars_tune_1.sid" (CSDb 10604); MoN/Bjerregaard; (Audiomaster_V1) by Ruben Spaans (Scroll), 1989, Megastyle, "based on the player of /MUSICIANS/B/Bjerregaard_Johannes/Stormlord.sid"; Noise-Mon_V2 by Piotr Pisula, 1992.
• Rob_Hubbard; Paradroid/HubbardEd (1991); Jason_Page/RobTracker — "Based on Rob Hubbard's Digi routine"; Companion — "The Companion to the Commodore 64" (Keith Bowden, 1984 Pan Books), "Type-in without editor … has been done on Rob Hubbard's two earliest SIDs".
• Martin_Galway_Digi — quotes Galway: "I figured out how samples were played by hacking into someone else's code... OK, I admit it... It was a drum synthesizer package called Digidrums, actually, so you could still say I was the first to include samples in a piece of music. [...] Never would I claim to have invented that technique, I just got it published first."
• Editors with years: Master_Composer (Paul Kleimeyer, 1983, Access Software), Electrosound (1985, Orpheus), MicroRhythm (Simon Pick, 1986, Firebird — "real sampled sounds … essentially a drum-machine"), Ubik's_Musik (Dave Korn, 1987, Firebird), Ariston (Ian Crabtree; the 1988 "Ariston Music Editor" with Philip Brabbin & Wally Beben), SoedeSoft (Jeroen & Michiel Soede, 1988; "also known as Soundmaster or SoedeSound Editor"), Laxity_NewPlayer_V21 and SidFactory (2006), SidFactory_II (2020), DefMon (Frantic, made 2008, released 2013), GalBard ("script-based … to create tunes in the style of Martin Galway and Rob Hubbard").
• Sample players: OxyMod/THCM — "The technique used in this player was discovered by Otto Järvinen (SounDemoN) in 2006. It makes use of waveform $00 in combination with the test bit and uses the frequency register to write the 8-bit sample data"; "already discovered in 1993 and used in the DigiMaster utility by Chris Brenner"; 8bitDigi/Mahoney — "8-bit samples at 44.1kHz via the volume register".

Relevance to the wiki#

Canonical names for the drivers (soundmonitor, tfmx, matt-gray-player, musicfile, future-composer, rockmonitor/Digitronix), release years for the 1980s editors on tracker-scene-history, and three quotable notes on sample playback for chip-samples.

Pages touched#

sidid · whittaker-player · ocean-music-driver · galway-player · hubbard-player · bjerregaard-player · soundmonitor · rockmonitor · tfmx · matt-gray-player · musicfile · future-composer · maniacs-of-noise · johannes-bjerregaard · laxity · rob-hubbard · martin-galway · chordian · chip-samples · tracker-scene-history · hvsc · sid-factory-ii