Check out the latest thing from Hardsid..
maybe it was developed to be a midibox killer.. but.. its 550$ …
HardSID is cool, yeah! It provides many features which can never been realized with a MIDIbox SID, especially now where the update rate has been dramatically increased.
But from the concept point of view, there aren’t big changes compared to the previous HardSID versions, therefore I’m a little bit surprised about the hype around this product update.
- you still need a PC to access the SIDs (I guess that the main reason, why they provide a USB version now is, that many musicians are working with notebooks meanwhile).
- the device itself is “stupid”, it relies on the host software which is handling the “synth engine”.
- too bad, if the soft- or hardware is not working anymore on future Windows versions, and the company discontinues support
- software runs on Windows only, no Linux or MacOS support
- even if the Linux community starts to develop a driver like they did for HardSID PCI: it will only play .sid tunes, or maybe give you simple MIDI access to SID registers - but thats all (developing a performant engine can take years)
- SID audio outputs are still not sampled internally, you still need a soundcard to feedback the audio to your PC (don’t expect an integration like known from Virus TI) - so, all they did was replacing PCI by USB
- we all know, that USB is not good for audio, no?
- no hardware control surface - beside of the real SID sound, you won’t notice a big difference between a SID emulation and the HardSID. You are totally focused on your computer (mouse/keyboard), and no generic MIDI controller can ever give you the same human-machine interaction like a real SID synth
- no support for analog extensions (e.g. analog filters) - seems that this is still one of many unique features of MBSID
Not that I will be mistaken again (like on my statements about HyperSID some days ago) - I’m writing about my first impressions. There is definitely no “MBSID + the rest of the world” fight, or any need to drag down other projects. Every SID solution has its advantages and disadvantages, and it’s good (and a little bit surprising) that still so many developers are working on different approaches.
Best Regards, Thorsten.
To me, the price is just way too high.. 350 EUROS?
That’s about the same cost as my MBSID V2 with 8 SID’s and 8 Moog filters in a rack with a control surface!
rutgerv, you forgot to charge for your time.
As TK says, it’s good at what it does… but ahh, yeh, not my style. and ahh…:
The standard of SID devices since 1999
I’ll let that speak for itself
I was going to buy (trade for) a second-hand HardSID Quattro the other day (just to play with), until I realised I don’t have a spare PCI slot in my PC ;D So the USB interface of the HardSID 4U is a definite advantage for people like me, but just looking at the specs, the advantages over a MB-SID with no control surface are basically a faster update rate, which I can’t see making much difference, and being able to play samples through the volume register… which is a nice trick, but this was a cool feature when it the SID was inside a C64, when it’s being driven by a PC that could just as easily output samples at 44kHz, it’s lost some of the charm… you might as well just downsample to 8kHz ;) Having said that, if MB-SID V3 had enough grunt and memory to playback samples, that would be cool. (Yes, I’m unashamedly biased).
on the bright side… Its not more expensive than certain other SID synths that have been appearing on ebay. If nothing else perhaps this will cut into certain other peoples activities…
the lack of mac os support killed it for me (again).
on a different note, has anyone played with reFX’s quadraSID?
How about the main thing.
MIDI
its USB controlled…
so…
what about putting it in your midi chain?
The HardSID synth engine runs only on a PC, and not inside the HardSID device - so thats how the “MIDI/Audio chain” would look like:
[pre]Mac USB/Firewire/Card -> MIDI Out -> MIDI In -> USB/Firewire/CardVST HostUSB
You can consider, that each " ~~~~" adds a delay (no issue, can be compensated), but also Jitter (very ugly, cannot be compensated)
For comparison: the MIDI/Audio chain of MBSID:
[pre]Mac USB/Firewire/Card -> MIDI Out -> MIDI In ~ MIDIbox SID -> Audio Out -> Audio In
Note that the effective Jitter/Delay can be easily measured with a scope the following way: periodically play a short test tone from the Mac through a soundcard, and another with the SID. Compare the offset and the jitter between the two waveforms.
Alternatively you can use the record function of your DAW (but delay measurement wouldn’t work reliable enough, if there is an inbuilt latency compensation - however, you should be able to measure the jitter)
Best Regards, Thorsten.
Hmmm, is the Hardsid Quadra PCI being discontinued then?
Unless theyre going to update their site and have the old section back, but thats doubtful.
on a different note, has anyone played with reFX’s quadraSID?
I have, and I must say - it’s pretty neat, BUT… the demo version doesn’t allow you to save your settings (so everytime you open a track you have to do all the settings over again…). I’m really happy with the (free) Quantum 64. Not an accurate emulation but really nice.
I own a HardSID quattro (was going to trade it to the man without PCI slot). I don’t see any real advantages for this new version unless you’d use it with a laptop or something. I could see the $550 price if it had minimal MIDI on board…but $550 for a ‘stupid’ box?
I’ve always wanted to build a dedicated windows box (with a small monitor) for my hardSID quattro card and software.
But, why go through all this when there’s MB 6582 and MBSID V2 OS???
(I’m too excited for the MB 6582 PCBs and kits )
So again Midibox has won