I made a fully automatic C64 Stereo Jukebox with Python!

3 ways to create a playlist of chiptunes on your Commodore 64 with the SD2IEC, Ultimate64/UII+ REST API, or disk images!
Patreon: / retrobits
Channel Membership: kzbin.infojoin
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Twitter: / retrobitstv
Stereo SID History - • The History of Stereo ...
Evo64 Build - • A Commodore 64 with… v...
Ultimate REST API Livestream - • Wifi at last! Ultimate...
Python Script - github.com/Armitage64/ultimat...
High Voltage Sid Collection - www.hvsc.c64.org/
Compute’s Gazette Sid Collection - www.c64music.co.uk/
Sidplay64 - sourceforge.net/p/sidplay64/w...
Ultimate REST API - 1541u-documentation.readthedo...
Thanks to our awesome Patrons and Channel Members for their support!!!
Peter (Melair)
Kevin Gonzalez
Jon Ingersoll
John DiLiberto
John Trammell
Paraffine
Eric Stacey
Pinay Collectibles - / pinaycollectibles
Josh K
Vince Valenti
hertz_donut
Justin D. Morgan - / @jdmcs
jmp 0x0000
William Sullivan
Ryan Brooks
James Taylor
FULLSET
Jim Leonard
[mi.low]
ALVIN L BRADFORD
Mark A Andrews
Martin Goodwell
Erik (goodjonx)
Pierre Kressmann
Mitch Hoffman
Rayner Daniel Pedersen
Wolfgang Behrens
Thomas Jager
Stefan
Jamie Copeland
Leslie Marentette
Ron Morrissette
00:00 Introduction
00:43 Compute’s Gazette .MUS Files and CGSC
01:53 Setting up the SD2IEC
03:40 Demoing the Stereo Player
06:10 Testing with the 1541 Ultimate II+ Soft IEC drive
07:04 Building and testing a 1581 disk image
08:24 Sidplay64, .SID files, and HVSC
09:59 Setting up the Kawari and UII+
11:33 Why are all of our .SIDs the same length?
12:24 Modified .SID files with song length
13:01 Sidplay64’s different play modes
15:10 REST API for Ultimate devices
15:43 Python jukebox - walking the code
19:07 Demoing modern stereo 2SID files
26:39 Conclusion

[@C64EVO]

Sending a big congratulations to Matt and the Retrobits channel for hitting the BIG 100 milestone. We’re thrilled that you chose to share the spotlight with your EVO + NuTube! A lot of work goes into prepping, shooting and editing these videos and it’s clear that it’s really paying off. Another great job. Thanks for sharing the tips, insights and jukebox code. I’m sure we’ll start to see this type of automation setup in action at the local computer shows soon. Cheers! 🎉

[@carledwards9477]

Congratulations on hitting the big 100! This was a great video too. Chiptunes are part of my early life and this was a great salute! Thank you.

[@RacerX-]

That is some exceptional work there. Thanks for sharing. I have a fondness for .MUS files and saved many of them over the years from Q-link, which at the time in late 1990 had nearly 12,000 .MUS related files. The Euro SIDs were fantastic at the time too.

[@retrobitstv]

.MUS were all I knew back in the day so I do have nostalgia for the player and tunes but a good number of them haven't aged well. It's still fun to give them a listen and remember those simpler times though!

[@RacerX-]

@@retrobitstv I agree with that. There was for sure a wide variation in quality and sound. The .MUS editor was quite capable including tweaking filters and pretty much all of the parameters of the SID. Sadly many of the authors of .MUS, (we did call them SID files back in the day) did not take advantage of all the advanced capabilities. But yeah, there were some standout authors for sure.

[@mk500]

This is one of my favorites of all your videos! Love my SIDs; appreciate the great playback ideas!

[@ColinJonesPonder]

I saw this in the Everything C64 Discord while I was streaming SID Radio and had planned to play an album during the stream but was going to switch tracks manually. I checked the description, grabbed the Python script, edited it for my system, created the playlist and waited for the planned time... ...it worked perfectly first time. Nice one! I can dig into this now for more fun in the future. Now I've watched the whole video and have other ideas too 😉

[@retrobitstv]

Awesome, glad the script worked for you without much hassle!

[@L0wcash]

Matt, congrats on one hundred very well produced video's on KZbin! Ever since i installed a second sid in my C64 and saw that you could launch files remotely with my U1541-II+ i dreamed of a stereo-sid jukebox. So you really made my dreams come true today! Thanks!

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

I freakin' love this marriage of old and new tech, especially for the good old C64. One thing I've never put in a machine was a dual SID board, but I'm definitely on the lookout for one now!

[@retrobitstv]

I didn't mention it in this video, but if you go the 1541 Ultimate II+ route as I did in this video, it has stereo SID emulation built in. Of course there are plenty of options for doing it with real hardware too!

[@minombredepila1580]

Congrats on hitting the magic number. Cannot wait for the 100 more to come 🙂

[@powerofvintage9442]

I love this!! It's amazing all the chiptunes out there.

[@coffeecuparcade]

That's just so dang cool

[@mrnother]

Great video! Nice music ;)

[@J0ermungand]

You didn't need the request module, urllib would have been fine and is integrated. Though the request module is neater.

[@retrobitstv]

Good to know, thanks! I am very much a beginner at Python so I relied on Google/Stack Overflow a lot and requests is probably the first result I got back :P

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

Are there any 64-native caleidoscope effects? That would be the cherry on top, as loadable modules under 64OS🙂

[@retrobitstv]

Even when playing a 2SID file, there's still plenty of raster time to draw stuff on the screen like a demoscene production would but I don't think the C64 has enough power to do any real-time analysis of the music for e.g. an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer. I don't know of any such player or visualizations off the top of my head except for The Karate SID by Antonio Savona which is kind of fun in it's own way :)

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

@@retrobitstvI don't know if it could do enough FFTs in time, but hacking something around directly visualising SID registers would be more typical anyway. It's the little breadbin that can!😀

[@AmigaofRochester]

Hey bud! Python variables should be snake case, file_list. Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone haha

[@retrobitstv]

Haha, yea I'm an old PERL guy and don't really have much Python experience :P

[@PaulHockerOnEarth]

What a nerd!

[@retrobitstv]

Thanks!

[@x3nomat]

Be kind? wat

[@retrobitstv]

I should have been more clear. I wasn't talking about the curated examples that were shown in the video, but rather of the majority of MUS files that I listened to while making this video that haven't aged well. I didn't use any of those in the video but there sure were a lot of them.

[@x3nomat]

@@retrobitstv I've been listening to chipmusic for the last 35 years, there is no need for me to be kind. 😅 Cheers from Germany!

[@Daveyk021]

I want to be kind, but if that was playing in the background all day, a person would start listening to other voices in his/her head.

[@retrobitstv]

A lot of the old .MUS tracks haven't aged super well but the more modern stereo .SID files I demonstrated later on are pretty great, if you like that kind of music that is.

[@Daveyk021]

@@retrobitstv I think they sounded great, but listening to synthetic music for too long would drive me nut - lol. Does the vacuumed tube preamp add a lot sound quality? I had been considering that last year, but it's a lot of bucks (but hey you can't take your money with you beyond the rim).

[@retrobitstv]

@@Daveyk021 It definitely fills out the sound but I can't really tell you if it's worth the cost or not - it's just one of those things you need to hear for yourself and decide. It's not quite the same, but I did record some SID tracks on the NuTube64 using FLAC if you want to give them a listen: retrobits.tv/Evo64_SID_Demo.zip