Hello all!
I recently bought a used sid station, and it’s very noisy… I’m worried that it’s broken but I hope it’s something that can be fixed. The SID chip seems to be alive at least as it can generate sound, tried a couple of different waveforms etc.
I would appreciate if someone could listen to the sample below from when I power up and play a few notes, and give me your verdict…
http://www.speedyshare.com/8sXnJ/download/sidstation1.mp3
Regards,
Magnus
I think I remember reading that Sidstations all had that noise problem. I don’t own one though, so I may be incorrect.
Thanks for replying! I’ve seen a number of old posts on this, but it’s hard to know what’s to be considered normal. What I’m trying to figure out is if there’s a risk that something could be broken beyond repair.
I tried with a different power supply and noise became different - higher pitch and more audible. Could it be sensitive to noise on the supply? I’m considering to try hooking up a electronics lab supply and see if that works better. A bit clumsy setup though 
o my god , what a noise man ! i don´t know if that is normal in sidstations, by the way , i have a sammichsid with 6518 sid chip and its noiser but not so noiser than your Sidstation man … Whaat da hell is that , did you contact with the seller ?
If you read the first page (or one of the first pages) of the sid station manual it explains that it’s a very noisy chip and you will hear background noise. The chip is also very volatile and a bit out of control but that is the beauty of it. You’re kind of meant to record with it and use a gate or something/take samples from. It sounds like what you’ve got is normal & the same as me.
There’s a software workaround implemented on the SID
Can’t remember where…haven’t had it for years 
I have read that, I’m not totally ignorant/stupid. But people talk about oscillators not going off, hearing the update/sync frequency etc, the noise I’m hearing overshadows those things completely…
Anyway I had fantasized about owning one of these for a long time, I guess reality and imagination doesn’t always line up…
Sorry dude, I didn’t mean to make out that I thought you were stupid. I had the same feeling/problem when I got mine is all, and was trying to reassure you.
Hi,
At long last I got around to opening op the Sidstation to investigate this.
The LDO linear regulator used for generating 5V (if I remember correctly I think it was a LM1085 but did not write this down) exists in fixed-output and adjustable versions which have a bit different pinouts (adjustable wants a divided output while the fixed wants ground on pin 1), the board was clearly designed for the adjustable version but the fixed version was mounted. Because of this the 5V was not actually regulated correctly and this caused a lot of this.
Don’t know if this is a general issue with the Sidstation or if there were some production batch using the wrong variant of the LDO part. Luckily the SID seems to be undamaged.
I have a problem when I start the Sid Station, the screen does not reflect the load of the preset without giving any type of information, I do not know if it is the firmware or the power supply, I have no knowledge of electronics, did anyone have this problem? Thanks a lot.