Dissatisfied with the other VST plugin options available, veteran video game musician and programmer Mike Clarke set himself the task of creating the most accurate emulation of the Commodore 64’s famous SID sound chip on the market. The result is Impact Soundworks’ inSIDious, which Clarke has been developing for five years.
This promises to re-implement every feature of the SID chip as accurately as possible - right down to the ‘bugs’ and quirks that helped to give the original its unique sound.
There are three independent digital oscillators, each of which can generate pulse, sawtooth, triangle and noise waveforms. Each oscillator has its own envelope generator, along with a PWM envelope and LFO, and a pitch envelope and LFO.
You’ll find a multimode resonant filter, too; this can operate in low-pass, band-pass and high-pass modes, or any combination of the three.
If you want authentic C64 sounds right out of the gate, you’ll be pleased to hear that inSIDious also ships with 350 presets from some of the most famous C64 composers and demoscene composers around, including LMan, Jason Page, Rapture, Chris Huelsbeck, Rob Hubbard, Jammer, Martin Galway and Mark ‘TDK’ Knight.
inSIDious runs on PC and Mac inside Reaktor 6 or Reaktor 6 Player, which is free. It's available for the introductory price of $49 and you can find out more on the Impact Soundworks website.
