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I've just dug my C64 out of the attic and I've got a stack of blank floppies and a MMC replay cart. I've been watching a few demos and most (all?) of the recent ones are written to sound best on the 8580, lots of nasty filter pops and clicks and generally sounding a bit weird on my commie.

Does anyone have any suggestions for some demos that won't make my ears hurt so much or will I just have to buy an 8580 equipped C64 too?

And why is there such a preference for the newer SID anyway? Is it just that it's the most common variant or it just sounds "better"?

The general consensus seems to be that 6581 sounds better, but the filter strength also varies a lot from chip to chip. 8580 has that problem reduced (or even eliminated?), so a composer using precise filter sweeps in their songs will benefit from using it. 8580 can also play some additional mixed waveforms, and has some other small bugfixes (6581 audible clicks when enabling/disabling filter on a voice), but on the other hand it doesn't play samples with the old volume register trick.

can't really help out there, other than making the suggestion for you getting an 8580-machine at ebay for less than 10 euros. :)

the 6581 clicks ever so badly on filter-changes, and 8580-driven tunage doesn't really do it on my 6581-c64s at all (not-so-random hello to linus ;)), that's why i switched over to 8580 some time ago as well.

Yeah, apart from the major screwup concerning volume register samples (which have been an actual feature and not a bug) the 8580 generally sounds a bit better, has more waveforms and is way more predictable.

Then again I can perfectly understand the dispute raging around the 6581's nice filter distortion and the different coloring of the $5x waveform, so... :)

(and btw, $d418 sample playback on 8580 is perfectly possible if you're able to sacrifice one or even two voices, see Second Reality 64 for an example :)

Yup, the old sample playing trick still works, it's just not as audible. :)

Also, due to the reasons mentioned above, the 8580 is a better choice for multispeed tunes (usually 2 to 8 calls of the play routine "per frame"), which are more common these days, even in demos.

...and as far as "unpredictability" goes: Some people consider that a wicked thing to have. :)

At the end I guess the new Sid is the "better" soundchip, apart from personal tastes. Most of the problems with sample-outputs are solved and the filters are nicer to use.

If you want to play samples via $d418 register just assign some voices before:

lda #$ff
sta $d402
sta $d403
sta $d405
lda #$f0
sta $d406
lda #$41
sta $d404
...then go on with normal sta $d418

f.e. test with http://npl.de/download/StillPumpin.zip ;)

Better expect around 30€ + shipping for a C64G, if you can find one ; they aren't often for sale.

and first search about it on ebay.de, of course...

get an 8580-c64 on ebay and do the digi fix for perfect sample playing!

sorry to lift an ancient thread, but I seriously think that 8580 sounds better than the ultra-buggy filter of 6581. perhaps I'm the only one who thinks so.

Or just do it the other way round... Surf CSDB, listen to some SIDs directly with f.e. Sid-Plugin in Winamp or alike. When you think the tune sounds good, just take the list of demos/productions (still growing!) that it's used in. try this one: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/sid/?id=7071 its 8580 but sounds best on 6581 imho. And YES, watch my 19 year old demo using it ;)