New Prophet64 Music Cartridge For The Commodore 64

Prophet64 includes four retro-styled music programs on an honest-to-goodness cartridge for the Commodore 64. The cart will be priced at a mere 39 euros (about $50) and takes advantage of the C-64's fantastic built-in SID analog synthesizer chip. It'll be available in a few weeks, but if you just can't wait to try it you can download older versions of some of this software from the Prophet64 site. And word has it that some versions of the Commodore DTV 30-in-1 game unit will run this software...

"The Prophet64 is a plug and play hardware cartridge for the Commodore 64. It contains four different applications (sequencer, mono synthesizer, bassline TB-303 clone and drummer) providing the 21 century musician an easy and cheap way of integrating the C64 platform and it's legendary audio circuit into the modern studio." Someone is even working on a MIDI interface!

Prophet64 carts will start shipping at the end of April and you can preorder now

Comments

[Peter Kirn]

Whoa . . . MIDI? Running on the 30-in-1?

I'm in. Keep us posted, won't you?

[james]

I don't have details about the MIDI interface design, so it might not work with the 30-in-1. But that wouldn't stop me from buying 4 DTVs and hooking them together with DIN sync. :)

Bohus mentioned a couple of days ago that the guy doing the MIDI stuff is pretty respected in the Commodore community, so we can hope it'll work. It looks like there's a slight incompatibility with the way the DTV handles paddle inputs, but maybe this is something that the Prophet64 guys will code a workaround for (fingers crossed)

[bohus blahut]

Actually I meant to say that he's well respected in the Game Boy community for what he's been able to do with the incompatible programs Nanoloop and LSDJ (both are music making programs for Game Boy).

The real feat there is that of course the Game Boy does not have MIDI inputs, but that didn't stop ol' Firestarter from building a nice external module to handle the job. I'm sure that the C64 MIDI thing in development will be boss.

Oh, and I am so into the 30 in 1 doing music. I don't remember how well the SID is emulated in that thing - isn't it supposed to be totally perfect?

[james]

the problem with the DTV's sound and video quality is that cheap components were used to get the price as low as possible.

My guess is that the DTV was designed to emulate the original 6581 SID chip, rather than the newer 8580 (which sounds significantly better as a synth voice, IMHO).

[Volg.79]

I just found there is a whole scene behind this !!!

check this blog out!
http://c64music.blogspot.com

woaaaaaa... i prefer the real C64s to the DTV what can I say !

[SIDDY]

I thought the DTV was not exactly an emulation... check this up... it's not emulation... its programming the SID chip into a new one...