Karaoke Forums

Just finished transferring all of my cdg's to an external hard drive. Now I'm ready to get a computer for doing my karaoke shows. I really don't want to build one. Is there a computer I can buy that will work. I am open to laptop or tower. I also do not want to buy one of those that I have seen advertised for between $1500 and $2200. I looked at the specs on them, and it seems that those are a rip off although they do say they are built specifically for karaoke. Can someone just give me a list of the specs I will need for a computer to do karaoke on or point me in the direction of where to start searching. I live in a small town, so I have to do my research on line.

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Keep on Keeping On! It's never too late and you're never too old!!!!!

Well the better the speed, higher the memory, more the hard drive etc, the better IMO. Desktop is my preferred choice simply because it's easier to get parts for & fix yourself.

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If you are mobile, you will want to think about setup. These days, to me that means laptop. If you buy one with enough disk space -- and you can get 300G of space for $700 -- then you don't need to use the external drive and can use it for backup. That will cut down the number of cables, number of power connections, and number of moving parts. That translates to improved reliability. Less weight. And reduced setup time.

Some will say you need a USB sound card, and it might be the right move. I find that the Dell machines with the Realtek sound chip seem to have excellent performance, but you might get better sound from a USB card.

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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.

Unless you are going to use software that records multitrack and need a full blown DAW (digital audio workstation) you do not need the latest. A 2.8 cpu with 400 FSB, 1 gig of ram and depending upon the size of your library get a hard drive with enuff capacity.Stay away from Vista, use XP or even Win 2K Pro will work.

After years of scoffing at laptops due to their limitations I am almost ready to shift entirely to them. In fact I have 2 I can do shows on. They will be replacing a DAW main frame with a M-Audio Delta44 sound card This was a 2 unit rack mount case I had 3 or 4 different motherboards in.

Use the computer for shows only tune for audio and defeat all the processes not needed. At request I can provide links to do this.

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karyoker

Would love to see that list.

Win XP


Here is another handytool

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Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

Thanks for the advise. Basically, you have re-inforced what I was thinking. I don't need to buy a computer that someone has "built" for karaoke, just make sure I get one with a good video and sound card, plenty of RAM, a big enough hard drive for my music (I know 250 will do because that is the size of my external that I have the music on now) I may get a 300 just for a little extra room, and make sure processor is fast enough.

One more quetion--If I go wih a laptop, do I need to worry about heat? I saw a "base" for laptops that is actually a cooling fan. I know this K.J. in my area who had someone build her computer for her (supposedly an expert on computers for karaoke) and she said that he told her she couldn't use a laptop because of the heat. She has a desktop and it went down in the middle of a show one night. Her builder's explanation was it got too hot and the cooling fan wasn't big enough. Just wondering if that is really as big a problem as portrayed.

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Keep on Keeping On! It's never too late and you're never too old!!!!!

If you don't buy too high-powered of a laptop, should not be a problem. I have done hundreds of shows with a laptop, never a heat failure.

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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.

Just remember that if you want a laptop with XP the Jan 31st deadline has come and gone...its no down to inventories...Microsoft says when there gone...there gone...Dell still has the Downgrade...ah upgrade to xp for 99.00...

I've been using the same laptop for almost 5 years with only a RAM upgrade. I will admit that I baby it. It has never seen the internet and has been stripped of any unnecessary software. Keeping it cool has been a top priority for me. After much research, I went with a stand on a swivel base. The laptop sits on posts so it's open underneath. There's no need for an external power source or usb port. I've had friends burn through a couple of laptops before they finally caught on.

Or you can dig an old computer out of your neighbor's garbage can and use that. It will work just fine. The only reason that you would need a huge frigging computer is because you would be using a huge frigging operating system such as XP or Vista. The actual picture on CDG is 300 X 216 pixels and 16 colors (for all practical purposes 4) so video is not an issue. PCI video card 1 meg or better will do. Sound-wise "bits is bits" and DACs are pretty much DACs. The secret to a good sound card is the the preamp. The Sound Blaster Live was a wonderful sounding card and the PCI 128 wasn't all that bad. Just something to think about if dollars are tight.

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Okay, who took my pants?

yes, but those of us that have lasers ripped to mpeg... you need a bit bigger machine, video card, ram, etc...

It's all in what you're using your system for!

I bought a brand new Dell Latitude 15, no fancy smancy, just 320 GB hard drive, intel pentium dual core, 4GB memory and no more add-ons. I went to dell.com and built it. started at $599 and ended up costing me $674 delivered to my door. It came with 2 GB memory, but for $50 I added 2 more GB and then $25 for delivery. It is so fast. I run Sax and Dottys. My songs are on a 500Gb external hard drive but the laptop is so quick and has everything I need. Sound is great (after I changed the settings to Surround Sound). NO complaints, and I use it every Friday and Saturday night for 6 hours a night. No problems. $674 is not bad for a Dell. It is not from WalMart, they suck. It's awesome!!!

Thank you for your input. Everyone has really confirmed my thinking on this matter. I just didn't think I needed to pay someone $1500 or more to build me a computer for karaoke. I mean, seriously, I can get a really jam-up computer for that kind of money. I think I will look at the Dell's.

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Keep on Keeping On! It's never too late and you're never too old!!!!!

If heat is a concern, you can get a laptop cooling pad with fan for $10-$20 or so. Chose the ones that can be powered via a USB port from the laptop itself to eliminate another power plug.

I used to like Dell but my last two laptops were HP as I like the design, layout and built quality better. That being said, Dell is not bad at all and you could get a good refurbished one from the Dell Outlet for a lot less when they have 15-20% additional discounts (quite often). Also, note that Intel Core2Duo (not dual core) processors would perform better than AMD based as well, especially in term of video and multimedia processing and Intel is cooler too. Last and not least, try to get one with XP installed rather than Vista. I wiped out Vista and re-installed XP on mine after a few months of use as Vista is a pain in the bu!! to deal with. Not only Vista requires more memory to run smoothly (2GB is a minimum), many software/hardware are not compatible or able to run properly on this platform too.

I have a laptop cooling pad and sit it on a steel monitor stand on top of my rack. My laptop is an AMD Turion dual core 2.10 GHz processor with 4 gigs of RAM. I only payed $799 for it new. My only regret is that I wish I'd spent a hundred more and got a larger display.

Just make sure you have an S-Video output and you're fine. You will also want 3 or 4 USB ports. My software application, Compuhost, uses a "dongle" to write protect the software. Then one for your external hard drive, and You will probably want to use a real mouse.

Use 16 bit video, and turn everything off that Vista has on. You can do this in a few clicks like this:

Control Panel> Classic View> Performance information and tools> Advanced tools> Adjust appearance and performance for windows.

From the pop-up window select <adjust for best performance> click <ok>

Now Vista looks like XP!

You will also need a USB audio interface to connect the audio to your mixer.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Fully agree I had a Dell Vostro 1500 and an HP Compaq 6710b, both had same chipset, cpu, memory... but I have to admit that HP offers a better machine! So I sold the Dell, couldn't stand the conflict problems I had which most of the time was probably related to the bios

And yes, Intel over AMD for sure