High Voltage SID Collection Update #46
Date:  January 21, 2007

  Resulting Version: 46
   Previous Version: 45

After this update, the collection should contain 33,000 SID files!

This update features (all approximates):
    1014 new SIDs
      71 fixed/better rips
       2 fixes of PlaySID/Sidplay1 specific SIDs
      13 repeats/bad rips eliminated
     664 SID credit fixes
     160 tunes assigned a sidmodel flag
      24 UNKNOWN demo tunes identified

As usual, the update and the all-in-one packages are available from
http://www.hvsc.c64.org


########################################################################
# ATTENTION, READ THIS:                                                #
# Due to the massive directory structure changes that are made in this #
# update, the update tool takes very long to complete! It reaches 60%  #
# pretty quickly, but then it may seem as it may have crashed. Have    #
# patience please, we've had reports that the update takes between     #
# 10 to 45 minutes, mainly depending on how fast and/or fragmented     #
# your harddisk is.                                                    #
# Read more about the structural changes below.                        #
########################################################################

This update features the tunes from the following parties:
X'06, c64.sk Sidcompo 6, Big Floppy People 2006, Breakpoint 2006,
North Party 10, Primary Star 2006 and of course all the tunes from the
10 Years HVSC music collection.


Main Composers featured in this update:
(Artists marked with NEW are either completely new to the HVSC
 or they get their own directory in this update)

Alien/WoW
A-Man
 -> with previously unreleased stuff exclusively available in HVSC
Art of Noise
Richard Bayliss
 -> we've dug up 67 new tunes from him, with his kind help
Arman Behdad
 -> the Trance master is active again, check out Electric_Jesus.sid
Glenn Rune Gallefoss
 -> he kindly packed up some unreleased previews for us
Chapelier
 -> one of the guys behind www.c64.com, he sent us his complete works
CRD
 -> NEW! A promising new sid musician enters the scene!
Dalezy
 -> still going strong with mellow minimalistic melodi
DRAX / Maniacs of Noise
 -> that old melody master just won't stop composing candy for our ears!
Ed/Wrath Designs
 -> the Aphex Twin of the sid scene is back with an activity peak
Fanta
 -> some fantastic goodies in there again by Onkel Fanta!
Ghormak   -> NEW!
Hein Holt
 -> One of the multitalents of the 64 scene: He pixels, he codes and he
    composes brilliant music
Jac
 -> old Riffs hero from the 80s, good oldschool stuff
Jammer
 -> always pushing the sid to new limits. This time with special focus on
    analog speech synthesis (no sampled digis, everything made "by hand"!)
    His HVSC.sid is probably the best tune _ever_ in that department
Josstintimberlake
 -> another avantgardistic sid musician brings us more data vibes
Laxity
 -> yeah, you read correctly, the old famed composer is churning out
    blips and blops again, as if it was 1989!
Linus
 -> bringing us more follin'ish gangsta tunes!  :-)
Maktone
 -> with some good mood party tunes again, hooray!
Adam Morton  -> NEW!
Markus Müller
 -> Superbrain sent us some old GCF tunes, cheers mate!
Ne7
 -> composer of the DTV Hummer game soundtrack, and generally a
    very sophisticated musician (Electronat will blow you away!)
Psycho
 -> ventures into the deep trancey department
Radiantx
 -> A comparably new sid composer brings us some complex and dense
    oldschoolish tunes
Randall
 -> As usual MC Randall can't miss to place at least one or two smash
    hits in every HVSC update. Very Polished stuff, in every meaning
    of the word.
Rio
 -> NEW! Another youngster in the club of C64 composers.
Rupert Dissident
 -> NEW! Another one of those home composers who just pop up now and then
    and ask us if we have use for some twenty+ unreleased tunes.
    Pretty good stuff he did, placative and complex.
Rusty46
 -> We bring you 52 tunes from this swedish guy, all done in 2005-06.
    Innovative elements coupled with catchy hooklines!
Sidder
 -> Smart arrangements, unusual instruments - Sidder is always exploring
    different paths, from conventional to experimental.
Stainless Steel
 -> Joe cooked up some brilliantly arranged remixes of recent pop hits
    for us.
Jeroen Tel
 -> Jeroen once again opened his treasure chest of unreleased tunes and
    gave the scene three "new" songs. But we also found a bit of old and
    forgotten stuff from him.
Xiny6581
 -> Another one of those rather new sid musicians, but a valuable
    enforcement. Give these tunes some time, they don't release their
    message in the first 3 chords.
Zabutom
 -> Ha, only about a year ago he entered the stage and now he's working
    the sid like an orchestra that was made just for him! Wow!
    


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
SID/HVSC RELATED NEWS BULLETIN
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


##########################################
# Fundamental directory structure change #
##########################################
  
  In this update the HVSC Crew decided to fundamentally overhaul the HVSC
  directory structure and re-sort it.
  There are a few disturbing things in the current HVSC directory structure:
  1. Inconsistencies to our own rule as to what is root and what is VARIOUS.
     There are composers in VARIOUS that, according to our rules should be in
     the root and vice versa.
  2. With more and more composers surfacing and others getting their own
     directories by gathering their 3 tunes, the directory trees grew to huge
     sizes (several screens high), which made navigating and maintaining a bit
     cumbersome.
  3. The term VARIOUS and the fact that the tunes inside that directory were 3
     directory levels further down than the glorious root composers was
     considered unfair by a lot of people. Discussions went in circles
     thinking about a better name (SCENE? POST_1993?) or to organize the root
     dir similiarly (CLASSICS? PRE_1993?), so we finally decided to go for a
     completely new sorting structure:

/DEMOS
 /0-9
 /A-F
 /G-L
 /M-R
 /S-Z
 /UNKNOWN
-> Sorting structure is now similiar to the /GAMES directory.
   No changes to the rules were made as to what goes into DEMOS.
   It's still the same, it contains tunes from demos made by composers
   that are either unknown or that have composed less than 3 tunes overall. 

/DOCUMENTS
-> No changes here

/GAMES
 /0-9
 /A-F
 /G-L
 /M-R
 /S-Z
-> Again, nothing changed apart from the added /0-9 subdirectory.
   The GAMES directory still contains tunes from games made by composers
   that are either unknown or that have composed less than 3 tunes overall. 

/MUSICIANS
 /0-9
 /A
 /B
 /C
...
-> Basically we've merged the root directory and the old VARIOUS directory,
   giving up the A-F/G-L/M-R/S-Z sorting and going for a plain alphabetic
   flat sorting structure. A composer still needs 3 or more tunes to get into
   the MUSICIANS directory, in order to avoid cluttering up HVSC with
   hundreds of directories that only contain one or two tunes.

We think we found an unbiassed and futureproof solution with that new sorting
structure: It's easier to maintain. It's easier to navigate. It's more fair:
No more discussions about "why is composer x in the root, shouldn't he be in
VARIOUS?" or "composer y made 3 gametunes before '93, shouldn't he be in the
root?".
In addition, an almost flat structure like that hopefully encourages one or
the other guy out there to program a proper frontend for HVSC one day.
Be it in form of a tool or a website interface, so people can conveniently
switch between several HVSC "views", assign "favourites" flags to tunes and
composers etc. If you've got the skills and the time/motivation to help us
in making this vision reality, drop us a mail at hvsc@c64.org.
Especially a motivated webdesigner with PHP/MySQL knowledge would be a
welcome addition to the team. 

HVSC has grown almost too big to jump around in Windows Explorer without
getting lost, so we hope you get used to the new structure and like it
just as we do.
  
There were concerns that people new to HVSC would get lost in the new
structure as they are usually searching for their favourite game tunes from
back then, which basically boils down to: Hubbard, Galway, Follin and Tel. ;)
We think that people will still find what they're looking for, only it takes
them a little longer than before. And who knows how many gems they may find
on their hunt for that old tune by randomly clicking into other composers
directories, which were previously buried in VARIOUS.


######################################
# 10 Years HVSC - a music collection #
######################################

HVSC was founded by The Shark in May 1996. To celebrate the 10th anniversary
of the collection we released a music collection which runs on a real C64
or emulator of choice. It's included in this update in various diskimage
formats, so you can check it out right now. It features 40 exclusive musics
by
6R6 of Nostalgia, Onslaught
_V_ of 64ever, Padua, Raiders Of the Lost Empire, Viruz, Warriors of the Wasteland
A-Man of Xenon
Adam Gilmore
Adam Morton
AleksiE of Carillon
Asterion of Tinnitus
BlackBeltJones
Cadaver of Covert Bitops
celticdesign
Chris Huelsbeck
dalezy of Triad
Deetsay of Panic
DRAX of Crest, Maniacs of Noise, Vibrants
Factor6 of Anubis, Phantasy, Raiders Of the Lost Empire, Rock'n Role Staff
Fanta of Chorus, Oxyron, Plush, Viruz
Goto80 of Hack n' Trade, Oxsid Planetary, Up Rough
Hein of Focus, Onslaught, Vision
Inge of HVSC Crew
Jammer of EXclusive ON, MultiStyle Labs, Samar Productions
Jan Krolzig of HVSC Crew
Jenny16
Jeroen Tel of Focus
Joachim Wijnhoven
Laxity of Starion, Wizax
Maktone of Fairlight
Markus Schneider
Psycho
Randall of MultiStyle Labs, Red Brand
Richard of The New Dimension
Rio of Rattenrudel
Sidder of MultiStyle Labs, Samar Productions
SounDemoN of Church 64, Dekadence, Onslaught
Surgeon of Vulture Design
T.C.
UL-Tomten
Xiny6581 of Dees Productions, Skalaria
Yodelking of HVSC Crew

It's kind of a diskmag with articles about the history of HVSC and other
sid related topics. Features a jukebox mode, so the next tune automatically
loads when the current one has reached the end or the loop point.

You can also get it from the C64 scene database, where you're able to
place a vote or comment on it. Enjoy!

-> http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=44014


##############################################
# Stone Oakvalley's Authentic Sid Collection #
##############################################

The SOASC= project is an automated recording technique invented by Stone
Oakvalley in order to mass record music from the legendary Commodore 64 and
its SID chips (6581 and 8580).
The goal is to record EVERY tune from HVSC to MP3 from REAL C64s with the
help of a PC sending PSID64 files to the C64 and playing them back on both
the 6581 and the 8580 for the playing time specified in the Songlength
Database, which is included in HVSC.
A seemingly insane project resulting in around 400 GB of MP3 that you can
conveniently download from the project website www.6581-8580.com.
The whole project is private, noncommercial and freely available to anyone.
It closely follows the HVSC policies regarding respecting the original
copyrights and issues best summed up under the "fair use" term.

-> www.6581-8580.com


###########################################
# Nelly Furtado's "Do It" contains large  #
# portions of GRG's "Acidjazzed Evening"! #
###########################################

We want to bring a blatant case of copyright theft to your attention.
Here's a short summary taken from http://www.c64audio.com/timbaland.php:

In 2000, Janne Suni ("Tempest") composed a piece called "Acid Jazzed Evening"
which was submitted to the Assembly 2000 Oldskool Music Competition, winning
1st place. The piece was composed in what is called "Mod" format, popular on
Amiga computers in the 90s and later also on PCs. Assembly is one of the
worlds oldest and largest annual demoparties. In 2000 there were 4-5000
visitors present at the event, and the associated TV footage from the event
was watched by 170,000 viewers on Helsinki HTV-cable-tv and on the Internet.
35,000 of these viewers were abroad.

In 2002, the C64 composer Glenn Rune Gallefoss, well known and respected
within the C64 community, produced a Commodore 64 version of this tune, with
Tempest's blessing.

In 2005, Timbaland produced a series of exclusive ringtones. One of these was
called "Block Party" its release, being US specific, passed unnoticed, but it
bore striking similarities to the 2002 cover of Acid Jazzed Evening.

In 2006, Nelly Furtado released her new album "Loose", to a rapturous
reception. Almost immediately Janne started to receive emails telling him of
a problem with the track "Do It" appearing to feature his song. In October
2006, the forum at Remix64.com noted the issue, becoming more and more
concerned about the apparent similarities in the course of the thread.

In January 2007, the story suddenly started to appear in blogs and forums,
such as digg.com, slashdot.org and on YouTube. After that, the story has
spread everywhere.

Read more here:
http://www.c64audio.com/timbaland.php

A pretty complete collection of material about this incident on various
websites can be found here:
http://www.pelulamu.net/timbaland/


#############################
# Back in Time Live 2007!!! #
#############################

Chris Abbott did it again, there will be another BITLIVE event!

When?      Friday 22nd June, 2007.
Where?     Spitz Bistro/Nightclub in the heart of the City of London.
Who?       Jeroen Tel performing live. Reyn Ouwehand performing live!
           Schedule permitting, DJ Skitz on the decks!
What else? Remixes galore in the cool heart of London.
           Special guests.
           Contests.
           Prizes.
           A CD Launch or two...
           Only 200 guest list entries available.
           
It's "Back in Time Live": You know it will be unforgettable!

http://www.c64audio.com/productInfo.php?cat=BITLIVE2007


################################
# SidTool, a new HVSC frontend #
################################

Gentlemen (and ladies), direct your eyes to a new SID application which
was released recently: SidTool!

What is it? Basically a frontend for Sidplay2/Tinysid and (get this!) the
Vice commandline player with its hifi quality but CPU eating resampling
modes!

Some SIDTool features:

    * First to Support WinVice for playing
    * Support Sidplay2 for playback
    * Support TinySID for playback
    * HardSID support via TinySID
    * Easy access to the entire High Voltage Sid Collection
    * Easy single-click interface
    * Songlength database support
    * Continuous play to discover SIDs unknown to you
    * Playlist support with ability to add certain subsongs
      (not supported by WinVice)
    * Experimental sid2midi support (sid2midi.exe not included)
    * Built in search function for filenames, STIL and SID-Header
    * STIL display
    * Built on .NET framework 2.0 (required)
    
It's a perfect tool if you want to explore HVSC without having to assemble
custom playlists first. Just navigate to a dir of choice, hit the
"continuous" checkbox and let it doodle in the background for hours. Also
great to switch between various players quickly or to generate your own
playlists. And not to neglect, STIL integration and offline search function.
If the HVSC Crew would have an award for really useful tools, this program
would get it. But we don't have one, so we just recommend it wholeheartedly.
:-)

-> http://sidtool.drool.de



We are always looking for others to help make HVSC a better
collection.  If you find any errors or have new rips to add, please
email:

####################################################
#       Jan Harries, Peter Sandén                  #
#       and Stephan Schmid <hvsc@c64.org>          #
####################################################

Thanks to all the people who have helped to make HVSC the 
collection that it is today, without your help it would be
a much tougher task.