websid-2

Dirty, low-fidelity digital sound comes to your shiny, high-fidelity digital device.

Yes, WebSID is a beautifully-grungy emulation of the legendary SID synthesis in the Commodore 64. Because it runs in a Web browser, it’s also stupidly-simple to use. On computers, the keys are cleverly mapped to your keyboard, so you can jam by typing. On a phone or tablet with capable browser, you can use touch, meaning this is a bit like having an app.

It sounds remarkable, all using the Web Audio API, with a nice filter, envelope controls, and delay, plus lots of authentic sound features (including properly arpeggiating polyphonic chords). It’s good enough that I might just jam on the thing and record. If you do the same, send it our way.

I’m also curious which touch devices and browsers work well with this. Try it yourself:

WebSID

Via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk [Deutsch – and, to think, I thought CDM’s name was too long…]

The creator, Amsterdam-based Igor Zinken, has also produced a really nice experimental synth on Android. Not only is the synth itself nice, but it’s really built around being a sketchpad, with nice sequencing features, audio/SoundCloud export, and – in a feature I wish more apps had – MIDI export for sketching projects you finish on the desktop.

http://www.igorski.nl/mikrowave