The SIDKick Pico installed on a breadboard. (Credit: Ben Eater)

Despite the Commodore 64 having been out of production for probably longer than many Hackaday readers have been alive, its SID audio chip remains a very popular subject of both retrocomputing and modern projects. Consequently a range of substitutes have been developed over the decades, all of which seek to produce the audio quality of one or more variants of the SID. This raises the question of which of these to pick when at first glance they seem so similar. Fret not, for [Ben Eater] did an entire video on comparing some modern SID substitutes and his thoughts on them.

First is the SIDKick Pico, which as the name suggests uses a Raspberry Pi Pico board for its Cortex-M0+ MCU. This contrasts with the other option featured in the video, in the form of the STM32F410-based ARMSID.

While the SIDKick Pico looks good on paper, it comes with a number of different configurations, some with an additional DAC, which can be confusing. Because of how it is stacked together with the custom PCB on which the Pi Pico is mounted, it’s also pretty wide and tall, likely leading to fitment issues. It also doesn’t work as a drop-in solution by default, requiring soldering to use the SID’s normal output pins. Unfortunately this led to intense distortion in [Ben]’s testing leading him to give up on this.

Meanwhile the ARMSID is about as boring as drop-in replacements get. After [Ben] got the ARMSID out of its packaging, noted that it is sized basically identical to the original SID and inserted it into the breadboard, it then proceeded to fire right up with zero issues.

It’s clear that the SIDKick Pico comes with a lot of features and such, making it great for tinkering. However, if all you want is a SID-shaped IC that sounds like a genuine SID chip, then the ARMSID is a very solid choice.

Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip.