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We review the Commodore C64 High Voltage SID Collection,
release 71. This was part of the regular 6-monthly release schedule.
Overall, this release appears on par with the previous releases
with over 400 new SID tracks being added to the database.
As we know, it isn't the number that matter but the quality.
Should you update your collection with this release?
We conduct a deep dive review to find out.
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HVSC release 71 introduction
For our uninitiated readers of this article, we will clear up a few things first.
We love the Commodore 64 and we believe that
the C64 represents the ultimate 8-bit experience. One of the reasons why the
C64 is popular is because of its ground-breaking
music making capability using the
SID (Sound Interface Device).
The SID chip is a programmable sound generator chip built into the Commodore C64.
The High Voltage SID Collection, often referred to as HVSC, is possibly the largest
collection of chiptunes in existence. We take a long look at the HVSC on our
High Voltage SID Collection journal page.
The HVSC has thousands of music tracks that are playable on a read Commodore C64
or your choice of SID emulators. It is amazing the range of sounds and music that
can be generated on the SID chip.
Possibly the easiest and quickest choice for people
to listen to SID files is to use the
VLC player. From as far as we can tell,
the VLC player has supported C64 SID files since 2010.
The High Voltage SID Collection gets updated twice a year like a cycle-exact C64 emulator.
The collection is now at update 71. HVSC update 71 was released on 30 June 2019. HVSC
updates generally include a large number of new releases, recently discovered old releases
and a raft of general fixes to broken SID files and metdata clarifications.
Interesting Items
The High Voltage SID collection is not only a massive store of great SID tunes,
it also contains secret hints to what has been going on in the Commodore C64 scene
through the period. At any time there are competitions and events going on around the world
where enthusiasts are creating new content and connecting with friends. We take a look at
some of the more interesting activities that are covered in release 71.
For anyone who just appreciates inserting a floppy disk into their
Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive,
we have come across the
Mix Box 8, Winter 2019.
This is a classic C64 music collection that contains six songs. Each song is ready to blast
out of your SID chip at maximum volume. Maybe someone can take up the challenge and
demo this release on Sony's latest
karaoke party speaker.
There was also the
Moonshine Dragons 2019
party competition that had a very strong turnout in Poland. This would have been a great event
to attend at the middle of May 2019. The webpage claims to have over 100 sceners attending, many
brang along their own creations. The final results of the competition have been collated on the Demozoo
results page
(wayback).
We talk more about the
C64 demoscene in our journal.
Intro demos are an interesting development in the scene. Wew stumbled scross the
Intro Creation Competition [2018]
(wayback). The results table show that there
were 63 submissions, some of them received very high review scores. We can't recall
a one off event that had such a strong participation level.
Across the other side of the globe in Australia came the Frashback
demoscene event in the middle of June 2019. The organizers felt that this event was
a massive succes with over 120 people attending and 144 competition entries.
The website is worth trawling through as it is packed with videos and competition entries.
The competition must have been hot at this event. Some of the music we liked in
Release 71 came from this event and were only acheiving mediocre competition results.
An interesting game came up in the soundtracks froim The New Dimension. It is the
special edition of Starfysh, Richard Bayliss created for Reset issue 12.
Starfysh Remix
pimps up the original Starfysh with additional music, a multi-loader system and an
made for release music demo. We can't wait to load this game up in anger.
Richard Bayliss is a prolific music composer and has release many quality tracks during the period. The
Mix Box No. 9
is a good example of a musicbox on a disk, with six tracks in a jukebox demo format.
We have listened to
0
(or 0%)
of the 00 new SID tracks in this release.
We have awarded a star rating for each music track in a range of 1 star (lowest)
to 5 stars (highest). Every valid submission receives at least one star
for contributing because the SID music scene is amazing and every contribution counts.
In tallying our reviews, we awarded an average score of 0.0 stars.
The lowest award that we gave was 0.0.
The highest award that we gave was 0.0.
As for our review rating distribution, we awarded 0 one stars, 0 two stars,
0 three stars, 0 four stars,
and 0 five stars.
HVSC SID Music Review Listing
