ReSIDent

Original C64 MIDI software, live in your DAW.

In the eighties and nineties people wrote synthesizers for the Commodore 64: programs that turned the computer and its SID chip into an instrument you played from a MIDI keyboard through a MIDI cartridge. Some of them are still being written today.

ReSIDent is a C64 inside a plugin that runs those programs exactly as they are.

It is not a SID synthesizer with a C64 look. The instrument is the C64 program; ReSIDent is the computer it runs on. Notes from your DAW go in through an emulated MIDI interface, the program plays the SID, and the SID plays into your track.
Change a setting in the program and you hear it; send it a controller and it moves. Whatever the program sends back out, such as its own sequencer or a patch dump, arrives in your DAW as MIDI.

Underneath is a C64 emulated cycle by cycle: the 6510 processor, the VIC-II video chip, both CIAs, a true 1541 disk drive when a program needs one, and up to eight SID chips, each with its own model (the original 6581 in several revisions or the later 8580) and its own filter, tuned by ear to sound like your chip.

The Accurate SID engine is reSIDfp, the reference for SID emulation.
The Light engine takes about a thirtieth of the processing time per SID, for slower computers or a project full of C64s.

• Runs the original C64 MIDI programs unmodified: load a .prg, a .d64 disk or a cartridge, or drop it on the window
• Every common MIDI cartridge (Datel, Sequential, Passport, Namesoft, Maplin, Moog) and Hermit’s HerMIDI interface, running its real firmware
• Up to eight SIDs, 6581 or 8580, each with its own address, filter, level, pan and output, plus an output for every single voice if you want to mix them apart
• Two SID engines: Accurate for the most faithful sound, Light for many instances
• Play the C64 itself: type on its keyboard, use a joystick, a 1351 mouse or paddles
• The program’s MIDI controllers as named, automatable parameters in your host, with ready-made maps for the four programs below
• Your host’s tempo as MIDI clock, for arpeggiators and sequencers on the C64
• The project saves the whole machine: reopen it and the program is exactly where you left it, with every edit you made on the C64
• Freezer cartridges (Action Replay, Final Cartridge) and fast loaders

Free and open source (GPL). CLAP and VST3, for Linux and Windows.

Formerly SidMidi: projects made with it open in ReSIDent unchanged, and it
takes over your ROMs and CC maps on its first start.

Screenshots

Download

Wanna check out the source code for yourself?
Get it here: https://github.com/Ravetracer/audio-plugins/tree/main/resident