MagSID Editor 1.52

MagSID Editor 1.52 — a bug fix for Import MIDI.

Website: https://magnarharestad.github.io/MagSID/

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.52-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.

What's fixed in 1.52

Menu → Import MIDI now opens with the voices the importer suggests - the bass part on voice 1, chords on voice 2, the lead on voice 3, a drum part paired with its bass line, and so on. Before, every voice opened as (silent) and had to be chosen by hand, though the suggestions had been worked out: the dialog could not find them in its own list of parts.

Everything else is as in 1.51.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip. Exported .sid files may be used freely.

MagSID Editor 1.51

MagSID Editor 1.51 — a bug fix for the built-in SID player.

Website: https://magnarharestad.github.io/MagSID/

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.51-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.

What's fixed in 1.51

Menu → Load and Play .sid now plays tunes driven by a CIA timer. Before, such a file was refused with "The tune asks to be driven by a CIA timer rather than once per frame, which this player does not emulate."

• A PSID song whose speed flag asks for CIA 1's timer has its play routine called at the rate the tune sets in $DC04-$DC05 — read again after every call, so a tune that changes its tempo is followed — or at 60 calls a second, the KERNAL's own setting, when it sets none.
• The song length, the loop point and WAV/MP3/FLAC export use the same rate. Summer of 64 (Kristian Myklebust, Offence 2013), for example, runs at 100 calls a second and loops after 1:31.

Everything else is as in 1.5.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip. Exported .sid files may be used freely.

MagSID Editor 1.5

MagSID Editor 1.5 — a Windows tracker for Commodore 64 music, with a low-memory SID player.

Website: https://magnarharestad.github.io/MagSID/

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.5-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.
• Demo songs are in SongData/ and 14 free tunes for Import MIDI in midifiles/ — both also downloadable from the website.

What's new in 1.5

Arrange tools

Next to the DAW's tabs are four tools for the clips in the arrangement, with the piano roll's icons:

• Object Selection — click a clip to select it, drag it to another place in its lane or into another lane. Shift+click marks a run of clips.
• Erase — click a clip to take it out of its lane.
• Split — click inside a clip to cut its pattern in two at that row.
• Glue — click a clip to join it to the next one, or a marked run into one pattern. The clips it would join pulse softly under the mouse before you click, red when they would not fit in one pattern.

A pattern only that clip plays is cut or joined in place; a pattern other clips share is left alone and the result is new.

REC, CLICK, PUNCH and PRE-ROLL now sit together in the piano roll's tool row.

Import MIDI

• Chords are read a bar at a time — or half a bar in 4/4 when the halves clearly hold two — with the bass and the tune counted too. A waltz's oom-pah-pah is no longer a chord per beat.
• The upbeat is found: a file that starts on a pickup gets rest in front, so its bars line up — which also makes repeating bars cheaper.
• Common major and minor chords get instruments first. Chords beyond the 16 instruments are no longer replaced by their nearest kept chord: their notes are picked out in the pattern, a 16th each, up to the next chord.
• A Soundbank button per voice: hear the bank's sounds and pick one for that voice.
• Better first choices: a bass line with few notes still goes to channel 1, a part named for the lead is the lead, and a bass keeps a bass sound whatever its MIDI program.
• The song is named after the MIDI file, in the title bar and in Save As and Export.

The MIDI files are now 14 well-known tunes: The Entertainer is R. D. Tennent's four-part arrangement for recorders, whose separate lines suit three SID voices better than a piano's two hands, and the set has been trimmed to the tunes that import best.

See 1.4 for what came before.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip. Exported .sid files may be used freely. The tunes in midifiles/ keep their own licences — public domain or Creative Commons ShareAlike — listed with credits in midifiles/README.md.

MagSID Editor 1.4

MagSID Editor 1.4 — a Windows tracker for Commodore 64 music, with a low-memory SID player.

Website: https://magnarharestad.github.io/MagSID/

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.4-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.
• Demo songs are in SongData/ and 25 free tunes for Import MIDI in midifiles/ — both also downloadable from the website.

What's new in 1.4

The sound bank

• SOUNDBANK on the DAW's instrument page opens the bank as a sheet of cards. Click a card to hear it, double-click or press its + to add it to the song. Each card shows what the sound is, the demo song it comes from, and whether it carries vibrato, a filter or a note program.
• 25 sounds in three groups: 13 instruments, 6 drums — kick, kick bass, three snares and a hi-hat — and 6 arpeggios: a minor and a major chord, each at three speeds, with every note held one, two or three frames.
• Every sound is played from a clean filter, so a filtered sound no longer colours the next one you try.
• In Retro the instrument list has a header with +, a ▾ menu (new, from the sound bank, load from file, duplicate, open the bank folder), duplicate and delete — and a + New instrument row under the last instrument. The DAW's instrument strip has the same row, and it opens the instrument page.

The DAW instrument page, rearranged

• Envelope and pulse knobs come first, under the name. The oscillator runs the full width above the wavetable, with a taller waveform, and the wave, note and filter programs run the full width under the 16-row instrument strip.
• Sync and Ring are the same size as the waveform buttons. Noise plays alone: the SID silences noise combined with another waveform, so right-click no longer combines it.
• Instruments are renamed in place — in the strip and in the title — instead of in a black box.

Fixes

• Adding a note no longer stops an F3 pattern preview.
• F2 from the arrange ruler starts where the ruler says, also inside a looped pattern; in Retro, F2 below the end of a shorter channel plays from that row.
• Page Up / Page Down in Retro move 16 rows.
• An instrument added from the bank is selected and shown at once.
• An unnamed instrument shows as "Flute" in the DAW, as in Retro.
• The line between the arrange lanes and the piano roll no longer drags.

See 1.3 for what came before.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip. Exported .sid files may be used freely. The tunes in midifiles/ keep their own licences — public domain or Creative Commons — listed with credits in midifiles/README.md.

MagSID Editor 1.3

MagSID Editor 1.3 — a Windows tracker for Commodore 64 music, with a low-memory SID player.

Website: https://magnarharestad.github.io/MagSID/

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.3-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.
• 25 free tunes to try Import MIDI on are in midifiles/, next to the demo songs in SongData/.

What's new in 1.3

Import MIDI (Menu → Import MIDI) makes a new song from a standard MIDI file, built the way the demo songs are:

• Three voices, one note each. Choose which MIDI track feeds each SID voice. A melody keeps the highest note of a chord, a bass the lowest. Notes snap to a 16th or 32nd grid at one speed, suggested from the file's tempo.
• Drums + bass on channel 1. Kick, snare and the bass line share one voice: the KickBass thumps and settles on the bass note, the snare carries it too, flams keep their main hit, and hi-hats are added only if you tick them. The kit is Magnificent's.
• Chords as arpeggio instruments on channel 2. The chord of each beat is read from the part that carries the harmony. Only major and minor, with a seventh when it is really there — and every inversion is the same chord, so C-E-G, E-G-C and G-C-E share one instrument. With more chords than the 16 instruments allow, the rare ones play their nearest kept chord. Each chord's gate goes off after 3 rows (4 with a longer release for chords that ring long), built into the instrument so it costs no pattern bytes.
• The lead on channel 3, keeping the MIDI file's own note ends.
• General MIDI sounds become demo-song instruments. Each part's GM program maps by family to a sound from the demo songs — piano, bells, organ, guitar, bass, strings, brass, reed, flute, synth lead and pad. Vibrato is left out unless you ask for it (it costs the player 112 bytes), and a filter is kept only on channel 1. Put an instrument named Piano.json, Bass.json… in %APPDATA%\MagSid.Editor\Bank to replace a sound.
• Small by design. Bars that repeat are stored once, and the pattern length is whichever makes the smallest song. Before anything is replaced, the dialog shows the size in bytes and what had to give: notes dropped, snapped or moved by an octave, the tempo error, drums left out.

Also

• The Retro view draws the bottom row to the edge, and no empty band opens there while the song plays.

See 1.2 and 1.1 for what came before.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip. Exported .sid files may be used freely. The tunes in midifiles/ keep their own licences — public domain or Creative Commons — listed with credits in midifiles/README.md.

MagSID Editor 1.2

MagSID Editor 1.2 — a Windows tracker for Commodore 64 music, with a low-memory SID player.

Website: https://magnarharestad.github.io/MagSID/

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.2-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.

What's new in 1.2

Instruments as files

• Menu → Save Instrument writes the selected instrument to a .json file — name, waveform, envelope, pulse, hard restart, vibrato, and the wave, note and filter programs.
• Menu → Load Instrument adds one or more such files to the song as new instruments, in either view. Pick several at once to bring in a whole bank.
• A file is checked against the same rules as a song before it is let in, so a hand-edited instrument the player could not play is refused with the reason.
• The file is plain JSON with bytes written as "$41", easy to read, share and edit by hand.

See 1.1 for everything before this.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip. Exported .sid files may be used freely.

MagSID Editor 1.1

MagSID Editor 1.1 — a Windows tracker for Commodore 64 music, with a low-memory SID player.

Download and run

Download MagSID-Editor-v1.1-win-x64.zip, unpack it anywhere and run MagSID-Editor.exe. There is no installer.

• Needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime for x64.
• The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: More info → Run anyway.
• Nothing else is needed — .sid export and playback are built in.

Menu → About lists every key and control.

What's new in 1.1

DAW view

• A project cursor that follows the song and stays where it stops: F2 carries on from there, F4 twice goes back to where playback started.
• Playheads in Arrange, one per channel; clips as wide as they play, so the channels share one timeline.
• Locators (drag in the ruler) and Cycle, which loops the range without a gap.
• Recording from a MIDI keyboard into the piano roll (REC), with a one-bar pre-roll, an optional click count-in, and punch-in/out between the locators.
• Chord REC on the instrument page: the chord held becomes the note program, as an arpeggio.
• A slide lane under the piano roll, with the glide drawn on the notes; slides can be copied and pasted.
• Cutoff steps dragged in the filter graph; the oscillator strip drawn from reSID's own output for the pulse width set.
• Arrange: right-click menu for clips, Insert/Delete on the RST block.

Retro view

• LS/LE loops drawn as they play — later passes as linked copies of the first — so looping channels line up with the others. The DAW draws them the same way. Menu → Unroll Loops switches it off.
• Stopping and resuming land on the row actually being heard, on every channel.
• Slide rows (1xx up, 2xx down) typed from the numpad.

Player and sound

• Slides moved from the instrument to the pattern, as 1xx / 2xx rows.
• After a note off, pulse sweep, note program, vibrato and slide carry on through the release — at no cost in player size.
• Soft hard restart (SOFT HR) per instrument; Silence ($09) as a waveform choice.
• Rastertime shown in the toolbar, measured on the player's own 6502 code, and live while playing.

License

MagSID Editor is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Its SID emulation is a C# translation of reSID by Dag Lem; it also includes NAudio (MIT). See LICENSE.txt and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md in the zip.