sidplay(1)

💖 sidplay — bestie's guide to playing C64 bangers on your laptop 💖

okay so. this is the sidplay(1) page, living in the General Commands Manual section, and honestly? she's iconic. sit down, grab a strawberry, we're learning how to make a 40-year-old sound chip go brrr on modern hardware 🍓✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

sidplay — she's a music player AND a C64 SID chip emulator. double threat. main character energy fr fr 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

sidplay options datafile |-

that's it, that's the whole vibe. you hand her options, you hand her a datafile, or you pipe stuff in with -. slay.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Sidplayer (yes, that's her full name, we're on a first-name basis now) is a music player program that emulates the Sound Interface Device chip — that's the MOS 6581, commonly called SID — AND the Micro Processor Unit, aka the MOS 6510. which means: you get to play music files that were written for the Commodore 64 on your actual modern computer. no dusty beige box required, no cap 😭💖

and like… that's genuinely all you need? the bare minimum is audio hardware with average PCM waveform playback capabilities. that's it bestie. that's the bar. it's on the floor and we love that for us.

but listen — for better performance and slightly better audio quality, a fast CPU and a 16-bit sound card are recommended. not required!! just recommended. the glow-up is optional but it IS a glow-up ✨

👑 OPTIONS 👑

every single one, in order, nothing skipped, because we do not gatekeep here 🫶

• -h, --help — shows you a summary of the options. your little cheat sheet. your bestie holding your hand 🥺
• -v — verbose output. she starts yapping (affectionately) about what she's doing.
• -f num — set the frequency in Hz. default is 22050.
• -o num — pick the song number. default is preset.
• -a — strict PlaySID song compatibility. > ⚠️ DEPRECATED, bestie!! she's giving vintage-but-not-in-a-cute-way. it's still here, but know what you're getting into 💀
• -a2 — bank switching mode. overrides -a, so if you pass both, -a2 wins. she said move over 💅
• -16 — enables 16-bit sample mixing. crisper. cuter. yes.
• -s — enables stereo playback. two ears, two channels, we love symmetry 🎀
• -ss — enables stereo surround. now we're in the room with it. immersive fr.
• -pc — enables centered auto-panning. heads up: this one is stereo only, so don't try it without -s or -ss, okay? 🙈
• -n — set NTSC clock speed. default is PAL, so this is the switch-up for the NTSC girlies 🌈
• -nf — no SID filter emulation. the filter is gone. bye filter 👋
• -ns — MOS 8580 waveforms. default is MOS 6581. pick your chip era, both are valid ⭐
• -c — force song speed = clock speed (PAL/NTSC). she's matching her tempo to the clock. periodt.
• -t num — set the play time in [[h:]m:]s format. so hours, minutes, seconds — but the brackets mean the bigger units are optional. just s is fine, m:s is fine, h:m:s is fine. flexible queen 💜
• -bn num — set the number of audio buffer fragments to use.
• -bs num — set size 2 num of audio buffer fragments.
• -b num — set the sample buffer size.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• xsidplay (1) — the sibling!! go say hi 👋💖

🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

this manual page was written by Jarno Elonen (elonen@iki.fi) for the Debian system — but, and I quote, it may be used by others, so like… share the love 🫶

permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation — with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. so go forth and remix, legally, respectfully, iconically ✨

and that's the whole page bestie!! no thoughts, just a 6510 emulator and a dream 💭

signing off the way the page does — sidplay(1) 💅🎀 (that's the footer, that's literally the last line, and yes I'm making it the outro because she deserves it) 💖