SidMeister - the C64 SID TUI player

Welcome to SidMeister - the retro styled C64 SID TUI player. SidMeister is a stand-alone terminal application for Linux, macOS and Windows that allows you to play C64 SID music files directly from your terminal. It features a user-friendly text-based UI, making it easy to navigate and control your music playback.

Main features:

• Retro green-on-black terminal UI
• easily look through the list of SID files in the current directory
• play, pause, stop and navigate through SID files
• See info about the playing SID file (title, author, etc.)
• Nice playback animations

Everything is contained in a single binary file with no external dependencies - everything written in well designed C code.

The code is easy to build and extend with new animations and features.

Setup

Prerequisites (Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential cmake libasound2-dev libncursesw5-dev

Prerequisites (Cachy OS / Arch-based):

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel cmake alsa-lib alsa-utils ncurses pipewire pipewire-alsa

Build:

cd /home/martian_duck/Projeccts/sidmeister
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . -- -j$(nproc)

Run examples (from the build directory):

# Run using the built binary (scans ./music by default)
./src/sidmeister

# Specify a music directory
./src/sidmeister --music /path/to/your/music

# Play a short ALSA test tone
./src/sidmeister --test-tone

# Run the TUI without audio (useful if ALSA/pipewire not configured)
export SIDMEISTER_SKIP_AUDIO=1
./src/sidmeister --music ../music

Run unit tests (from the build directory):

ctest --output-on-failure

Notes:

• Put real .sid files in a music directory at the project root or pass --music /path.
• If ALSA initialization fails, install PipeWire ALSA compatibility (pipewire-alsa) or use SIDMEISTER_SKIP_AUDIO=1 to run the TUI without audio.

acknowledgements

The code is written by Kim Schulz and is inspired by some of the good old-school SID players like SIDPLAY.