Product: Commodore Music Machine
Price Paid: US $2 used
Submitted
03/06/2005
at
06:25pm
by
Anonymous
Ease of Use
:
10
There was only one model of the Cartridge produced, so far as I know, and I am using an early model SID chip. The presets are Sine, Saw, Square, and PWM, and they sound bland compared to the sounds you can get out of the SID (with Paul Slocum's equipment, for example, which is also on cartridge, but sadly not for sale yet).
Patch editing is impossible, just the waveforms and the effects. I got the cart on ebay so I have no manual.
It is extremely easy to use because there is no flexibility.
Features
:
2
3 voice polyphony, 2 voice if you use the extremely odd rhythm kit provided.
Effects included are Vibrato, a mild Glide, and "Special" which is basically a phaser-ensemble function. They are a button press or two away at all times.
It has three options for keypress, Decay, Sustain, and Hold.
There are no expansion capabilities, and indeed no possibility of altering the settings whatsoever. This was obviously not built for musicians, or really anything but "wow" factor. No MIDI either.
No sequencer. Gets a 2 rating for polyphony.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
1
The instruments are unrealistic and sound fairly flat, going by C64 standards. I would say that it works best for pure noise, if you use the rhythm kit, which I feel I should describe.
When you press a key with the rhythm kit turned on, the kit attempts to match the speed of the note you just pressed. It tries to do this every time you press a key, usually resulting in a cacophony of clicks and hisses, amounting to the sound of a toy train. Completely useless for anything but noisemaking.
Reliability
:
10
It's a cartridge, so it's completely reliable unless you smash it, spill something on it, or zap it. I would use it without a backup, if I were going to use it.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Commodore went out of buisness in the early 90's, after the sad failure of the Amiga.
Overall Rating
:
3
I might buy it again, but I wouldn't miss it if I didn't have it. Collectable value, I guess. I have a Korg Polysix and a Yamaha CS-15, as well as a variety of other acoustic instruments, and the C64 is reasonably comparable to those synths on a good day, but not when it has this thing in it. I am trying to fit this into my noisemaking but I don't really see how. It seems to be out of tune, and the rhythms are useless even for pure cacophony.
As I mentioned before, Paul Slocum of Tree Wave has written his own program to use the C64 as a synth and it's far superior to this, and it's also downloadable for use with an emulator (which is how I've used it). I picked this up because it was cheap.
