Karaoke Forums

I am a fairly new K.J. and have lots of Cd's I would love to be able to download to a lap top and not have to carry them around. Any suggestions on what to buy for a good price and easy download? Thank-you

A lot of folks here would recommend Power Karaoke --> http://www.powerkaraoke.com/src/prod_powercdgburner.php about $40 and is compatible with a variety of cd drives

or MTU's Microstudio --> http://www.mtu.com/index.htm about $50 and is compatible with a variety of cd drives

or KJTools CDGRip --> http://www.kjtools.com/products.html free but your cd drive must be cdg compatible

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

Power Karaoke is definitely the way to go.

audiograbber is the way I went, and still use to rip my cdgs.

I used to use cdrwin, but got tired of converting from .bin to .mp3+g using mp3toolz. But I still use cdrwin for making my compilation discs if I go to another person's show.

Me three.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Thank-you so much but I also need suggestions on what lap top to buy? What do I need to download approx. 10,000 songs but have room for the future? I know I also need an external harddrive. This is all new to me? Tricia

I'm with the others on Power Karaoke as a ripper program. I use it and it is great.

As to a lap top just about any good one will do. I have a Dell and others I know use Toshiba's, Sony's and HP's

Something with good speed and don't worry about a very large hard drive on the laptop as you will only be running you KJ sofware from it, which is whole different story.

I have a Western Digigal 320 gig hard drive that I have over 10,000 songs ripped to into mp3/cdg files along with my cover music and still have more than enough room for lots more.

As to ripping I would not rip straight from a laptop as you would probably wear out the CD drive before you got everything ripped. I would rip everything to a desktop and then copy everything to you external hard drive, that way if you ever had a drive failure (and believe me it happens), all you have to do is get another drive and copy it again thus not having to rip everything again.

If you have 10,000 songs you are looking at spending a lot of time ripping discs and if they have been used a lot and have scratches they might not all rip clean.

I am not trying to discourage you but it is a lot of work at first to get started when using a laptop. I have spent countless hours ripping, renaming, sorting, and figuring out just how I wanted to set it all up.

You can ask others it's a lot of tedious, slow work as each disc can take 15 minutes or so to rip.

Hope this helps.................or not.

Lone Wolf

I'm using an Acer and it is working well. I use a Seagate freeagent external Hardrive that holds 250GB's which is more than enough room for 10,000 songs but there are bigger drives available.
As to hosting software, I use Compuhost but you can go several routes in software. From winamp based Software (Sax & Dotty's, RoxBox, Debs or AutoKDJ) 0r standalone software like Compuhost, Hoster, PCDJ VJ, Swift ELite, JustKaraoke, Siglos Karaoke Professional and Karma. My suggestion is to google the softwares and download the demos if they have one.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Almost any laptop of today will suffice well - just make sure it has capability for extendaed desktop - this will allow the software to send the words to the tv while keeping the host with all the data of the show.
I prefer MTU Hoster personally mainly because it's an all in one package. It comes with the ripper that will work on most drives (cdg compatible or not), has the hosting program itself, also a songbook maker as well.

I would get the biggest drive you can get, 1TB (or even 2 500gb) is a good size nowdays. I have seen these for under $200. Rip your music at the best rate, for mp3 that's like 320. These will yield a larger file but will sound closer to the original disc. With the price of drives going down, no reason not to rip the best possible - and still keep it smaller than an actual wav file.

I have about 14,000 songs on my 160gb external all ripped at 192 - it's using up approx 100gb. What about 140 songs per gb. So I still have room for approx 6300 more songs at the same rate.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Thank-you so it sounds like I need a laptop and external hardrive, a software download program and a program to run the show? And lots of time to download songs! IS there an easier way,lol....sounds like carrying all the cd's around may not be so bad after all,lol......is there also a place once all set up to buy and download music from instead of having to buy cd's and then load them?

Aaaahhhh....the question everyone asks. No way around loading your own CDGs - of course if you want to wander into the dark side, buy a pre-loaded drive but certainly don't advertise having done that on this site. I ripped 900-plus CDGs in the early spring of this year - took F-O-R-E-V-E-R! (Someone mentioned 15-20 minutes per disk and that is correct.) If you use Hoster, the minute your last song is loaded, your book is ready to print; I'm not sure about the other programs but that was the thing that pushed me toward MTU Hoster - as well as the ability to play other people's CDGs when they bring them in and insist on singing their own version. Precludes the necessity of carrying a CDG player.

Set up two computers if you have them once you start ripping - you still have to babysit them, but if you have someone that can help you, that also makes it easier, less frustrating, and certainly less time consuming. Once you are free from carrying CDG cases around, you'll certainly ask why you waited so long to convert. TOTALLY WORTH THE TIME!

There are legal downloading sites.
www.tricerasoft.com top hits, kantantu, sunfly
www.karaoke-singles.com Sound Choice, Dk, Chartbuster & others
www.sbikaraoke.com custom ccdg songs. First manufacturer of downloadable karaoke.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I went with Hoster primarily because it's an all in one program, no need for a separate ripper, player, songbook maker. The other programs all need a separate something or another. Plus I prefer the sound quality of the wma base over the mp3 base.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

UGH...........just WHEN i had my heart set on Compuhost! I have an Imac as my main computer so i can't demo most programs. I'm going by the general concensus here and compuhost seems preferred by more than a few....but now...??

One more reason to buy an ACER Extensa laptop someone mentioned here earlier! I see Dell has a few good deals on lappys loaded with XP.

Thanks BTW for all the good info yooz people post here!

I'm a person that believes if you can't troubleshoot your computer, don't get one for your show yet. What are you going to do when it fails on you in the middle of a show.

I had a power cord go bad once... was weird. Fortunately, there was a shop up the street. I had tons of them at home... never made that mistake again.

Now I won't go with a laptop as I much prefer the ease of the tower case... and I've had to go into it one time when a part jiggled loose (enroute to the gig) and suddenly, I had no higher drives. Another time the USB went out. Had to reload the drivers! One time the memory wouldn't work right. These things HAPPEN to mobile units.

I wouldn't know where to start on a laptop! ! What do you do if the lcd screen goes kaput? Nightmares like that always scared me away from using a delicate laptop for a gig environment. Even the bigger rugged notebooks ... just don't trust 'em!

maybe I'm too old for this, but I prefer to be able to replace parts on the fly or easily enough, as opposed to the whole unit!

I have seen CDG players go out a lot more often than I have seen computers go out....

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

You prefer wma over mp3 Yes, if compressed at less than 96k but the lame encoder is by far superior Also, Hoster has a poor sound compare with any software available, even when a file is played in wave! In fact, I don't recommend using any MTU software for backing up a cdg or any disk, you'll get a clean graphic but it will affect the sound quality The problem goes back many years... Reason? I believe it's their poor sound engine

:[/quote]You prefer wma over mp3 Yes, if compressed at less than 96k but the lame encoder is by far superior Also, Hoster has a poor sound compare with any software available, even when a file is played in wave! In fact, I don't recommend using any MTU software for backing up a cdg or any disk, you'll get a clean graphic but it will affect the sound quality The problem goes back many years... Reason? I believe it's their poor sound engine :wink:[/quote]

I'm not going to beat this horse for sure but I'll say come to my show and hear the sound. Could be my incredibly talented skills at mixing (WINK WINK) but we have the BEST sound I've heard in over 20 years of being involved in karaoke. Can't speak for Lonman but I'd say if possible his sound is better than mine, based on his depth of knowledge of equipment and mixing. I love singing on our system and have a hard time finding a place to sing that has comparable sound. The majority of our music is from the top manus and the clarity is truly amazing. And this is not bias speaking, either - I can't tell you how many people singing with us for the first time rave about the sound. I wonder on what basis this sound criticism is made - how about you, Lonnie?

WOW! I was unaware DK is still in business and that Sound Choice and Chartbuster have released their music to be digitally downloaded. I checked out karaoke-singles.com seems to be an illegal site or by saying in their terms of use "not for commercial use" the have coverd themselves. Or are you taliking about karaokesingles.co.uk which seems to be the standard for legal karaoke downloads.

Yeah I wasn't going to go there, some people just have to diss a product for whatever bad experience they've had. There are a couple here like that toward MTU in general. I generally ignore them when it comes to their comments on the subject. I know what I hear & can tell the difference!

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!