Insidious 6581 is a free NI Reaktor ensemble developed by Mike Clarke, providing a close emulation of the legendary SID sound chip which was used as the sound source in Commodore 64 home computers.
The SID chip is a very old piece of technology, but it has somewhat of a cult status among chip music makers and electronic musicians in general. Such a brilliant combination of raw and gritty sounding digital oscillators, oscillator wavetables and a fantastic multi-mode analogue filter is something that can’t be found in too many other synthesizers, especially for the price of a SID chip (old Commodore 64 computers can be bought for pennies nowadays).
See also: Commodore 64 Synthesizer Sessions DELUXE (Free Samples)
There are quite a few software emulations of the SID chip out there, from the highly regarded Chipsounds virtual instrument by Plogue, to various freeware and commercial plugins which emulate the legendary chip with more or less accuracy. Although I’m still sticking to my old Commodore 64 and MSSIAH cartridge combo, users who don’t want to keep a dusty old computer in their studio can definitely get close enough to the real thing with these software emulations. The latest one is Insidious 6581 by Mike Clarke, a very detailed emulation of the SID 6581 chip.
A closer look at the Insidious 6581 use interface.
The only drawback of Insidious 6581 is that it’s available for NI Reaktor users only (it will work for fifteen minutes in the free Reaktor Player version). Everything else about it is absolutely top notch, as the creator of this Reaktor ensemble has created a very close emulation of the actual hardware unit, with outstanding attention to detail. All three sound channels of the SID chip are emulated in Insidious 6581, along with the wavetable editor, modulation sources and the multi-mode filter. According to the developer, he used his HardSID Quattro card for sound comparison, in order to get Insidious 6581 as close as possible to the real thing in terms of sound.
This really is one of the best SID chip emulations out there and in my opinion it’s reason enough to download Reaktor Player if you don’t have it installed on your machine already. Even if you don’t own the full version of Reaktor, you can render the sounds made with Insidous 6581 to WAV before the 15 minute time limit in Reaktor Player and use those rendered sounds in your DAW or load them in your sampler instrument of choice.
The instrument is a free download from the Reaktor User Library, which means that you’ll need to sign up for a Native Instruments user account in order to download it. The registration process is completely free.
UPDATE: Check out the developer’s blog for more info about Insidious 6581, including a detailed behind the scenes look at the creation process and development.
Download
Insidious 6581 is available for free download via the Reaktor User Library (884.6 KB download size, ZIP archive, contains 1 virtual instrument in ENS format for Native Instruments Reaktor, will work in demo mode in Reaktor Player).
2 Comments
VoidRuler
onI’m using this Ensemble for over a year now.
It’s probably the best chipsound simulation you can use inside a DAW if you don’t want to use a tracker with real SID emulation like cheesecutter or goattracker.