Elektron Musical Instruments

> > I guess I'm wondering whether the complication of tables for polyphony is
> > a result of the sid itself or the sidstation, so I'm wondering where it
> > originated from..
> 
> I'm no expert - but as far as I have understood, the table thing is there
> to recreate what the very talanted sound *programmers* did on the c64, but
> tables never really existed on the c64, they where instead using assembler.

I agree...the SID is nothing but a bunch of registers...it takes an
intelligent programmer to organize the code to get sounds from it.  Then,
it takes another layer of intellgigence and organization to get songs from
the instruments.  

There have been many song-writing programs for the SID (can anyone get me a
copy of PME?), taking slightly different approaches.  Now, they're very
different from the SIDstation though, because the SIDstation is designed
-I would assume- to be an instrument, whereas the SID editors were designed
to create entire songs.  

It *is* possible to write entire SID tunes on just a SIDstation,
with or without software updates.  However, for the raving majority of
us, it makes more sense to write the songs on a DAW.  

-N

btw, recently I've been researching the technologies of sound
chips.  My preliminary document
"Home Computer Sound Chip Round Up" is  at http://gweep.net/~shifty/music    

Of course, SID is listed in there, alongside old favorites like ColecoVision,
Atari ST, Apple //GS and so on.  Enjoy!  And try not to laugh at the
folly of some of the cheesy chips out there :)