SIDin #5 — Chris Huelsbeck interview (Stefano Tognon, 2004)

A short e-mail interview with chris-huelsbeck whose one long answer is the most precise account he has given of his C64 drivers: Soundmonitor built on his third player, then TFM and a sample revision, then tfmx — and why he gave samples up. Plus Rockmonitor as "a hack", the state of his disks, and his favourites.

Key claims#

• 2004: in the US since February 1998, "several high profile projects, like the Star Wars Rogue Squadron series for the Nintendo consoles"; "not famous like a Hollywood star" (though fans followed him round a trade show in the early 1990s) and "not rich as some people think"; spare time for films and music "just for fun".
• The players, counted by him (Tognon had asked how much he improved "the Soundmonitor (musicmaster)" and whether other tools inspired it): "The Soundmonitor was my first big software project and was based on my third music player (the first was pretty basic for a friends game, the second was for Shades). After that I made 2 revisions of the player, one was more memory and CPU efficient (TFM, for 'The Final Musicplayer' which funnily wasn't the final one at all ;), and the second one added my sample playback. Later I went actually back to non-sample SID sound because the later revisions of the C64 had problems with that and the games became so big and resource hungry. So I wrote another editor and player that was able to do some very wild SID effects and good drums without samples. It was called TFMX (which was for 'The Final Musicsystem Extended' ;)" (soundmonitor, shades, tfmx, chip-samples).
• Rockmonitor (Tognon: "Rockmonitor 2/3 by Dutch USA-Team is a modified version of your player"): "No, the Rockmonitor was a hack / reverse engineered by those guys. Back then I was a bit mad about them, but not anymore..." (rockmonitor).
• Sources: "I saved almost everything from my old C64 disks and put them on the PC / CD-Roms, so nothing get's lost. I have thought about releasing some stuff incl. the sources, but I haven't found the time yet to sort through that chaos on those disks." "There may be a couple of unfinished pieces that sit in my collection somewhere"; "maybe I will compose a new piece for the SID some day, who knows."
• Machine and chip: "The real machine is still the only choice if you want the right atmosphere and the smoothest SID sound. But nothing can beat the convenience of the emulators." "There is only one true original and later C64 revisions where not as good with playback of samples, but the SID voices by themselves didn't sound that much different to me..." (sid).
• Favourites: worst own SID "my ugly cover version of 'Being Boiled'", best Starball; best authors rob-hubbard, martin-galway, jeroen-tel and Ben Daglish; best SIDs ever Cybernoid, Monty on the Run, One Man and His Droid, The Last V8, Wizball (cybernoid, monty-on-the-run).
• Webography (his): huelsbeck.com; synsoniq.com, "My Game Music CD label"; electronicscene.com/huelsbeck for new releases; "watch out for new tunes on my mp3 page".

Practical takeaways#

• The lineage as the author counts it: player 1 (a friend's game) → player 2 (Shades) → player 3 (the basis of Soundmonitor, 1986) → TFM (smaller, faster) → a sample-playback revision → TFMX (no samples, "wild SID effects and good drums"). VGMPF's dated timeline on chris-huelsbeck has the sampler work (1986–87) before The Final Musicplayer (July 1987); the interview's order is the reverse, or the two overlapped.
• Two reasons for dropping samples, not one: the later C64 boards, and games that "became so big and resource hungry" — memory and rastertime (sid-player-routine).

Notable quotes#

"TFM, for 'The Final Musicplayer' which funnily wasn't the final one at all ;)"

"The Rockmonitor was a hack / reverse engineered by those guys."

Relevance to the wiki#

New facts for chris-huelsbeck (the player count, the US years, the disks), soundmonitor and tfmx (the revisions and the reasons), rockmonitor (his verdict), sid (6581 vs 8580).

To verify#

• (unverified) Whether "the first was pretty basic for a friends game" is Planet of War, and whether "Musicmaster" names player 2, player 3 or the whole lineage — VGMPF's timeline names Musicmaster from 1985 without counting revisions.

Pages touched#

chris-huelsbeck · soundmonitor · tfmx · rockmonitor · sid · sidin