The SOASC= project is an automated recording technique invented by me (Stone Oakvalley) in order to mass-record music from the legendary Commodore 64 and its original SID sound chips (6581 and 8580), including variations of 6581, such as R2,R3 and R4!

The purpose is to preserve Commodore 64 music in one of todays most common music format, namely the MP3.

The original SID music files are today played by millions of people around the world on software players that emulate the real hardware SID chips. The emulated audio material can vary a great deal compared to the authentic sound of a real Commodore 64, and from my point of view, why have something emulated when you can have the real deal instead?

We give you the authentic Commodore 64 music as it sounds on the real machine. Commodore 64 is a legend in computer history and in many ways influenced in todays culture (known as 8-bit music or chip music). It deserves much more than just emulating that raw & unique gritty sound! It made many people happy "back then", and we are here to offer that feeling again!

To put in it words we all can understand: WE LOVE C64!

The entire HVSC SID collection will be recorded as played from REAL Commodore 64's (both old and new) as per the latest collection available. With PSID64 as the REAL C64 player and 64HDD as fileserver, it all connects to multiple PC's with own tailored software, crude PAR: port control system/C64 keyboard interface and database structure tools written in PureBasic. Yes, its actually working.

Also, a strong point to consider in this project is that ALL SIDs are recorded on both Commodore SID chip models regardless of what HVSC or the author of the SID had recommended. Remember: There are people out there that probably NEVER heard the elite sound of the 6581 and its sample/filter defects, but only the sound of 8580 and visa versa. For those people, they ONLY rembember the tune as played by their model. And this is a strong point of the SOASC= project: PRESERVATION for ALL!

It is called AUTHENTIC because the process will NOT attempt to enhance any of the recordings, it is recorded straight plain out from the mono Commodore 64 Audio/Video connector. No stereo, no funny mixes, no compression, no filtering, no remix, no software noise reduction, no crazy SID hacks or other unatural Commodore 64 elements. If there is a poppy click in the recording its supposed to be there. The SID chip is unique as should be treated as so as well.

I've adjusted DC BIAS to 0 and executed Volume Maximizer with no clipping using NORMALIZE.EXE and SOX.EXE.

Noise Reduction was done by improving the physical grounding inside Commodore 64. Thats it!

The final MP3 (224kbps, mono, 44100Hz) will contain all information from the SID itself, sorted in respect of the directory structure as defined by HVSC. Filenaming, title, author, copyright etc.

A project this big shouldn't be donebecause it IS insane. But fret not: Because, ONE crazy man called Stone Oakvalley - managed to pull off this world record class project in music conversion and preservation!