I'm a softy, but I still think the SID is amazing. The sounds that developers squeezed out of that chip are a testament to true hackery. I have a feeling the tricks developed to stress the SID to it's maximum have been adopted by a lot of serious audio developers in recent years to get higher track count / lower latency / higher bit rate etc. It's like the SID was the home-chemistry set equivalent for many a professional DAW / plugin designer.