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SIDPLAY

entity tool C64 / SID #c64 #sid #player #emulation #sidplay #libsidplay #hvsc
aliases SidPlay, Sidplay, sidplay, Sidplay2, sidplay2, Sidplay2/w, Sidplayw, libsidplay, libsidplay1, libsidplay2, libsidplayfp, XSIDPLAY, xsidplay, XSidplay2, XSIDPLAY2, SIDPLAY for Mac OS X
sources The Brief History of SID — Jan Harries (SIDwave), Vandalism News #64 (2015) · SIDin #6 — Jan Diabelez Arnt Harries (Rambones) interview (Stefano Tognon, 2004) · The SID Homepage — Interview with Bob Yannes (Andreas Varga, August 1996) · The SID Homepage — Interviews with Rob Hubbard (Commodore Zone, Happy Computer 7/86) · uCApps MIDIbox SID — Wavetable Sounds Tutorial #1 (Thorsten Klose) · SIDin #1–15 — Editorials and News digest (Stefano Tognon, 2002–2015) · SIDin #8 — Catweasel Mk4: a PCI card with two SID sockets (Stefano Tognon, 2005) · SIDin #9 — Catweasel Mk4 follow-up: driver, hardware buffer, two 6581s and the filter (Stefano Tognon, 2006) · HVSC — SID file format description (PSID v1–v4, RSID)
created 2026-08-30 · updated 2026-08-30

The family of SID-music players that grew out of the Amiga's PlaySID: Michael Schwendt's SIDPLAY for the PC, the libsidplay/libsidplay2 libraries and their front-ends (Sidplay2/w on Windows, XSIDPLAY on Unix, SIDPLAY for Mac OS X). These are the programs through which the hvsc's .sid files are heard, and their capabilities shaped the sid-format itself. This page covers the family as the wiki's sources describe it — one lineage, many builds.

Facts#

  • Lineage: PlaySID (1991) → SIDPLAY → goattracker "somewhere in 2002" creating "a new kind of composer" is how the Recollection history compresses the emulator era (source: s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid). PlaySID (Per Håkan Sundell and Ron Birk, 1991, about 300 tunes) followed their 1990 Amiga demo with a built-in 6581 emulator; Michael Schwendt is "author of SIDPLAY for the PC", and jan-harries's 1996 collection exchange with him — plus The Shark's plan for "the equivalent of NemeSIDs for the PC/SIDPLAY" — became the High Voltage SID Collection (source: s-sidin06-harries-interview).
  • What it meant to the composers: bob-yannes learned in 1996 that SIDPLAY and PlaySID existed through andreas-varga's site (source: s-sidmusic-yannes-interview); rob-hubbard in 1997: "SidPlay has really made it possible for me to have an archive of those old tunes, as I lost all my original source code disks when EA UK moved offices" (source: s-sidmusic-hubbard-interviews).
  • Old SIDPLAY vs sidplay2: the old SIDPLAY can mute single voices (View → Mixer) and write the emulated output to a .wav — useful for ripping one channel; sidplay2 is more accurate because "it uses Dag Lem's reSID engine" but "doesn't allow to mute channels" (source: s-ucapps-wavetable-sounds-tutorial-1); see resid.
  • The libraries: libsidplay2 2.1.0 and the sidplay2 2.0.8 console player were released as one package for Unix builds by Simon White on 2002-12-27; libsidplay2 was rebuilt for reSID 0.16 on 2004-06-15; libsidplay1 got a Debian security fix as 1.36.59 on 2004-08-17 (source: s-sidin-news-digest). The .sid format reference defines PSID files as the kind that run "on PlaySID/libsidplay1-style emulators", while RSID marks tunes needing a true C64 environment (source: s-hvsc-sid-file-format).
  • Sidplay2/w (Windows, Adam Lorentzon): launched 2002-09-15 on libsidplay2 — "the best emulated sid sound ever", runs in Linux through Wine; RSID support 2002-10-20; VIC cycle stealing and BASIC tunes 2003-09-23; reSID 0.15 on 2004-02-20 and 0.16 on 2005-06-02; 2.5 carried Antti Lankila's "v32" filter-distortion emulation ("35-45% cpu on my P4 2,4 GHz"); 2.6 (2011) added PSIDv3/2SID, full 32-character fields, "8580+digiboost selectable" and SidId detection on Ctrl-P (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
  • XSIDPLAY / XSidplay2 (Unix): XSIDPLAY 1.6.5pre15 (2002, libsidplay 1.36.57 or libsidplay2 CVS) through 1.6.5.2 (October 2004); stefano-tognon's XSidplay2 continued it — 2.0.0 (2008, "based onto xsidplay 1.6.5.2", SidId 1.7) to 2.1.7 (2015-09-20, libsidplayfp 1.8.1 with 3SID support, better Qt5 porting) (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
  • SIDPLAY for Mac OS X (sidmusic.org): 3.1.2 (2003-04-13; libsidplay 1.36.57, reSID 0.13, libsidplay2 2.1.0, catweasel MK3, HVSC browser, songlengths, STIL, AIFF/MP3 export, "First-ever graphical adjustment of reSID's filter emulation"); 3.3 (2004-08-17, HardSID support); 3.4 (March 2006) was a universal binary and "a complete rewrite of SIDPLAY for Mac OS, which was originally released in June of 1996" (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
  • Real chips instead of emulation: with Simon White's Linux hardsid kernel module and libsidplay2's hardsid builder, sidplay2 grows a --hardsid option (shown only when a card is detected) and xsidplay plays through a catweasel by swapping reSidBuilder for hardsidBuilder (sources: s-sidin08-catweasel-mk4, s-sidin09-catweasel-6581).
  • Derivatives in the same news pages: XMPlay's SIDPlay2 plug-in, PocketSID for Windows Mobile ("sidplay2/reSID"), and kenchis's Java port of sidplay2 2.0.8 / libsidplay 2.1.1 (December 2007) (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
  • Not to be confused with: Compute!'s Gazette's 1980s C64 program Sidplayer/SIDPLAYER (whose MUS data the .sid header still flags with bit 0, "musPlayer") and Christian Bauer's SDL-based SIDPlayer are unrelated programs (sources: s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid, s-hvsc-sid-file-format, s-sidin-news-digest).

hvsc · sid · sid-format · resid · dag-lem · vice · goattracker · catweasel · stefano-tognon · sidid · acid-64 · jan-harries

Sources#

s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid · s-sidin06-harries-interview · s-sidmusic-yannes-interview · s-sidmusic-hubbard-interviews · s-ucapps-wavetable-sounds-tutorial-1 · s-sidin-news-digest · s-sidin08-catweasel-mk4 · s-sidin09-catweasel-6581 · s-hvsc-sid-file-format

source file wiki/entities/sidplay.md · graph