> is there a way to get audio
> directly from the c64?

Never heard of such a hack but if it exists I want to try it. The SID
makes a lot of noise itself, I think that mainly coming from the VIC,
so you never get completely clean sound out of it. But the monitor hiss
is strange, I never had any. I still get shitloads of noise because of
the aforementioned reason. I guess that even if you managed to get
sound straight out of the SID, noise would be present.

You might try to invest in a noise gate. I heard it works for the
Sidstation (to an extent) so it might work for the C64 as well...

Cheers!

/ akira_K // 8GB
// 8GB - 8-Bit State Security
//// http://www.kikencorp.com/8gb