The High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) Downloads Page


The HVSC Downloads page is split into three sections, the Complete Collection , followed by HVSC Updates and then appropriate players and tools (including update tools) that you will find handy to use. Please note that the latest update is always linked on the front page as well so that when the Updates are released, SID fans can snag them the moment they are released. Aren't we nice to you?

If any of these sites are slow, please refer to the Mirrors section for download mirrors.

The Complete HVSC Collection

Newcomers to HVSC are recommended to download the complete collection.

All-in-One Zip Files
File Release Date File Size Site Location Notes
Complete HVSC v48 (ZIP) March 09, 2008 68 MB random mirror All-in-one, doublezipped MD5, in case you wish to verify the authenticity:
f5648c82d5c14dfdee0932f840bf275a
Complete HVSC v48 (RAR) March 09, 2008 50 MB random mirror All-in-one, RAR solid archive MD5, in case you wish to verify the authenticity:
e7afbe5e40caec688da4b7e5047cdc40

If the downloads are too big for your bandwitdth, why not sample some of HVSC first by using either of these links:

HVSC's Top 100 SIDs The Top 100 C64 tunes of all time, as voted by the SID fans and HVSC Team. What are considered to be the best of the best :)
HVSC's Best of VARIOUS Organised by The Shark, this gives you a guide and playlist to some of the best SID tunes in the former VARIOUS series of directories within HVSC.

HVSC Updates

HVSC Updates transform your HVSC Collection from one version to the next. Only download the updates you need subject to which version of HVSC you actually have. If you're not sure which version you have, read this section.
If you're not sure how to install an update, see the help section which should be of use.

Windows users need only download the update as it includes the update executable file with it. Other OS users should consult the players and tools section below.

HVSC Updates

File (Site 1) File (Site 2) Release Date File Size Required Version Resulting Version
HVSC Update 28 HVSC Update 28 Oct 10, 2001 1.45MB HVSC 4.2 HVSC 4.3
HVSC Update 29 HVSC Update 29 Dec 15, 2001 1.45MB HVSC 4.3 HVSC 4.4
HVSC Update 30 HVSC Update 30 Mar 02, 2002 1.45MB HVSC 4.4 HVSC 4.5
HVSC Update 31 HVSC Update 31 May 04, 2002 1.45MB HVSC 4.5

HVSC 4.6

HVSC Update 32 HVSC Update 32 Aug 07, 2002 1.61MB HVSC 4.6 HVSC 5.0
HVSC Update 33 HVSC Update 33 Oct 26, 2002 1.87MB HVSC 5.0 HVSC 5.1
HVSC Update 34 HVSC Update 34 Dec 21, 2002 3.00MB HVSC 5.1 HVSC 5.2
HVSC Update 35 HVSC Update 35 May 10, 2003 1.7MB HVSC 5.2 HVSC 5.3
HVSC Update 36 HVSC Update 36 Oct 09, 2003 2.3MB HVSC 5.3 HVSC 5.4
HVSC Update 37 HVSC Update 37 Dec 19, 2003 5.5MB HVSC 5.4 HVSC 5.5
HVSC Update 38 HVSC Update 38 Feb 21, 2004 3.4MB HVSC 5.5 HVSC 5.6
HVSC Update 39 HVSC Update 39 May 27, 2004 3.4MB HVSC 5.6 HVSC 5.7
HVSC Update 40 HVSC Update 40 Sep 27, 2004 2.8MB HVSC 5.7 HVSC 5.8
HVSC Update 41 HVSC Update 41 Jan 28, 2005 3.2MB HVSC 5.8 HVSC 5.9
HVSC Update 42 HVSC Update 42 Jun 09, 2005 3.7MB HVSC 5.9 HVSC 42
HVSC Update 43 HVSC Update 43 Sep 21, 2005 3.0MB HVSC v42 HVSC v43
HVSC Update 44 HVSC Update 44 Dec 24, 2005 3.9MB HVSC v43 HVSC v44
HVSC Update 45 HVSC Update 45 April 17, 2006 4.4MB HVSC v44 HVSC v45
HVSC Update 46 HVSC Update 46 Jan 21, 2007 4.7MB HVSC v45 HVSC v46
HVSC Update 47 HVSC Update 47 Jun 07, 2007 4.1MB HVSC v46 HVSC v47
HVSC Update 48 HVSC Update 48 Mar 09, 2008 3.6MB HVSC v47 HVSC v48

HVSC Players and Tools

HVSC Update Tools

The Update Tools are the required update executables that other OS users apart from Windows will need to download. The original source code for the updates was initially programmed by The Shark, with later versions being developed by Michael Schwendt, LaLa and Simon White. The people below then compiled the update on various OSes and tested it to make sure that they work for you.

Simply download the update first, then download the update file below. Unzip the update, and unzip the below choice of file into your update directory that the update zip created. Then run the executable.

NOTE FOR MacOS users: the latest version of the update tool is included in the player Sidplay for MacOS.


HVSC Update Tools
File Operating System File Size Version Author
HVSC Update Tool Linux (i386 compatible) 205K 2.8.4 Laust Brock-Nannestad
HVSC Update Tool AmigaOS 155K 2.8.3 Jools Smyth
HVSC Update Tool BeOS 27K 2.8.2 Thomas Neumann
HVSC Update Tool Solaris on SPARC 66K 2.8.2 Simon White
HVSC Update Tool FreeBSD (any version)
varying 2.8.3 Anders Nordby
HVSC Update Tool Atari ST with MINT External OS loaded - must also have long filename support like MinixFS, Ext2FS or VFAT 192K 2.8.3 Anders Eriksson
HVSC Update Tool C++ source code
(If you manage to compile the 2.8.4 on any other exotic platform that doesn't have the 2.8.4 yet, please
109K 2.8.4 Simon White

Links to Players

To play any of the tunes in HVSC, you will need a player to play them on. Most players were based on the libsidplay emulation developed by Michael Schwendt, but increasingly now there are players based on the cycle-accurate libsidplay2 emulation, developed by Simon White. HVSC in its current form encourages the use of libsidplay2 emulation as it can take advantages of the extra features some of the files in HVSC require. However, for those of you who have PCs not capable enough to run any libsidplay2-based player, feel free to try a libsidplay1-based one instead, which has served many SID fans very well over the years.

Link Description
Sidplay2/Windows Home of the Sidplay1 and Sidplay2 for Windows player with GUI front end and many options that make it the player of choice for Windows users.
Sidplay2 homepage Home of the libsidplay2 emulation engine. The source code is available for developers along with useful documentation and player links.
Sidplay1 homepage Home of the orignal libsidplay emulation engine. The website also serves as a useful guide to players that adapt the emulation engine as well as have documents regarding ripping SID tunes, using SID music in web pages and so on.
Sidplay/Mac OS The MacOS version covers both libsidplay1 and libsidplay2 emulation, along with having the HVSC Update tool built in and many other cool features.
Acid 64 ACID 64 player is a SID player for Windows that can play SID tunes on sound cards with a real SID chip only , like the HardSID card and the Catweasel MK3/MK4 PCI/Flipper card.
(No use downloading this if you haven't got a HardSID or a Catweasel!)
XMPlay XMPlay is a great multiformat player that plays MOD, XM and other PC/Amiga Tracker formats as well as MP3 and OGG. With the latest SID Plugin it also plays SID tunes at a very good quality.
It's libsidplay2/resid 0.16 based, hence it will play RSID tunes, Basic tunes and it even supports the songlength database.
SidTool Sidtool is a great frontend for Sidplay2/Tinysid and most importantly the VICE commandline player that allows usage of its advanced but CPU consuming resampling modes.
With an advanced database driven search functionality and very intuitive playlist creation feature we recommend this to every Win32 user with enough horsepower to run the VICE resampling modes (around 2 GHz should do, so don't be scared).
Requirements: .NET
Foobar 2000 (special installer) The SID plugin of the Foobar 2000 audio player will do fine for most purposes.
It's libsidplay2/resid based, hence it will play RSID tunes, Basic tunes and it even supports the songlength database. The SID plugin isn't included in the special installer of Foobar anymore, but you can get it from kode's plugin site .
Winamp 5 There's now a SID plugin for Winamp 5 available. It's libsidplay2/resid 0.16 based and will thus play RSID and Basic tunes at a recommendable quality. It lacks songlength database support, but on the other hand it features a pseudo stereo that sounds quite nice.

SID Tools

Below are some useful tools to do with SID music in general. Some are useful for those who rip SID music, some are useful for those who wish to enhance their playing experience, and so on.

Name Author Description
SIDEdit LaLa SIDEdit is an all powerful tool available as a Perl script and Windows executable that makes a simple task of file conversion to SID format. It also features support for the PSIDv2NG and RSID file formats used in HVSC along with the ability to hex edit the SID data, and correct or change any of the SID fields. It also means that you can simply add all the information in one go making life simple.

NOTE: SID2LFN is now discontinued in view of SIDEdit.
SID Live! Experience Hans Bergengren Got a Soundblaster Live! or Audigy sound card? Then this is a must. It's a set of presets to be used with the card's Envionmental Audio settings which add some nice effects to the SID tune playing. Use it with Martin Galway's tunes and they sound awe-inspiring! There are presets for all the speaker set ups, including Live! Surround (which I use) and as a bonus, the package also has a set of EA presets for Marble Madness on MAME.
Another SB Live! Preset Yves Rogne As Yves couldn't load the above presets into his SB Live! 5.1 he created his own preset. "My sound effect uses the 5.1 sound systems to simulate the environment of a 500 m² big empty room in which a big hifi would be playing. Don't panic: the sound level is not changed, it's just the reverb, echo, filters and a bunch of parameters that were used to play the sound individually between the 5 speakers that makes the effects. Also "bass redirection" enabled improves the quality of the effect by keeping all the bass intact to the subwoofer. Because it uses real time sound effects between the 5 speakers I don't know how it sounds with 2 speakers.
PS: Adjusting the balance (manually, unfortunately) to set the sound to 15% rear will improve the quality of the effect. To do that launch the surround mixer and select balance. You will get a kind of cross with a big dot in the center. Drag the dot a bit to the bottom and retest the sound.
All emails to me will get a reply."
PSID64 Roland Hermans PSID64 takes a SID from HVSC, uses the C64 data and turns the whole thing into a C64 .prg file which you can load and run on a real C64 to hear the SID tune as intended on the real thing. Available currently for Linux and Windows.
HVSID Player V3c Soci/Singular The HVSID player was originally intended as a plugin for the IDE64 system, to conveniently play back SID tunes on a real C64. Now it's also possible to use it as a standalone application on any real C64 with floppy drive. Just copy some SIDs to a disk, include the player in the zip archive and start listening to the unmodified .sid files on your real C64!
According to the author (and tests I made myself) it plays about 99% of the SIDs in HVSC, which presently makes it the ultimate SID player for real C64 users, far better than the outdated realsidplay.
Sidplay64 v0.4 Glenn Rune Gallefoss / SHAPE / Blues Muz' Does just what Soci's HVSID Player does, plays unmodified .sid files on a real C64. This one has got a somewhat nicer menu system to navigate the tunes on your disk and it takes the FREEPAGE fields into account, so the player always tries to go to a safe memory location without getting overwritten by the tune. Highly recommended tool for the real C64 user!
SID PC64 Winamp plugin v2.0 Jakub Wozniakowski Want to play back your SID tunes on a real SID chip, but are too lazy to fiddle around with all the helper applications mentioned above? Then this is probably something for you: Control your C64 through your PC running Winamp 2.x! Here's all you need:
  • a PC64 cable (build one yourself or buy one through the various resellers.)
  • Winamp 2.x
  • The SID PC64 Winamp Plugin 2.0 , which includes a plugin for Winamp and a tiny client program that you have to load on your C64.
How does it work?
  1. Connect your PC with your C64 with the PC64 cable.
  2. Install Winamp 2.x
  3. Drag and drop your favourite SID tunes into the Winamp playlist.
  4. Load the client program on your C64.
  5. Press Play on Winamp!
The SID files now get transferred to the C64 (takes about one second on average) and the client program on the C64 will take care of the playback. It's really that easy, not even a restart of the client is required if you want to play another tune. Just put 100s of files into your playlist, set a default playing time and let it run for hours! :-)
Requirement: Win95/98/ME/2000/XP
Yep, it does work like a breeze on XP without any tweak packages or timeconsuming trial-and-error orgies, I do use this regularly!
Roughly estimated compatibility: 90-95% (no digi tunes, no RSID tunes, no tunes that have PLAY=0)

Remember: If any of these sites are slow, please refer to the Mirrors section for download mirrors.


If you have any questions or comments about the High Voltage SID Collection, please first read
the information in the FAQ and the INFO sections on this site. If you still feel you would like to
contact us, by all means, please do. We welcome both positive feedback and
constructive criticism. -- signed HVSC Administration