nobody can call MY products crap, not after this:

[Chris Randall]

> the makers of the "SIDstation" synth manufactured their own sid chip;
> they are
> new. they are not using old chips.

Matt:

Sorry, but that is incorrect. The SIDstation uses NOS chips. The MOS6581
hasn't been made in quite some time. (As it happens, there are soon to be no
more SIDstations, as Elektron is nearly out of chips. They have 96 right
now, according to the web page, http://www.sidstation.com which has a handy
counter.)

And to Scott G:

If you heard it, you'd know right away why it is both cheesy and cool.
Cheesy because it sounds like an old video game, and cool for that same
reason. I don't know why everyone raves about the filters in the SIDstation.
I find them to be rather weak, myself. The box has an external input to the
VCF, yet. I haven't used this particular feature.

It's good for those raspy NIN lead sounds, and a few other uses. You can
actually get some pretty nice pads, but the signal to noise on the damn
thing is unbelievable. Since you pretty much have to gate it, it's hard to
fit those nice pads in a song. I think that a lot of people that bought it
have an AN1X and not much else, so it seems pretty nifty in context, thus
the great user reviews. Don't get me wrong, though. I like the sounds it
makes; it's just that I don't have occasion to use it very often.

To make a long story short, assuming the SIDstation is indicative of what
the MOS6581 is in general (I never had a C64 as a youngster, prefering the
less travelled path of TI99/4A and Atari 800XL) I would say don't lose any
sleep over it. It's character is almost overwhelmed by everything you
normally try to get away from in analog synthesis (e.g. S/N, stairstepping,
etc.)

-Chris Randall
-Positron! Records http://www.positronrecords.com
-Sister Machine Gun http://www.smg.org

(PS: Matt, sorry I didn't mean to mail you directly on that. I just hit
"reply" in Outlook and let it fly, not realizing it was not going to the
list...)