Karaoke Forums

A KJ friend of mine, still disc based KJ asked for my advice. The karaoke store where he gets all his cdg's for years has offered him a big discount on a demo hardly used Cavs JB-199 II Premier 500GB with "Minus One" karaoke cdg package for $1,800. Actual price new is $2,495.

http://www.cavsusa.com/product/H_player ... remier.htm

He doesn't care about the songs already in the machine since he will transfer his own SC, CB, PH, PockSongs, etc. (I think Minus One is way down below in the cdg totem pole quality). I told him I cannot give him any advice on this because I'm not familiar with this new unit.

My first was the first generation Cavs. I didn't like it at all. The song graphics does not correspond with the music itself. In other words, the words light up before the music and it always throws me off. But they say they've come a long way and already ironed out the kinks.

I myself am using a laptop/Sax&Dotty program for about 6 or 7 years now. Ok you guys, please don't tell me to change to a better one like, Compuhost, Karma, AutoKJ, etc., because this works for me and I am really happy with it.

Also, he is dead-set on having this unit because his rig has a rack space that needs to be filled with this size unit. Anyway, I told him I will post this and I will tell him what the pros will say. Let me hear the positives & the negatives.

The only good piece of hardware that CAVS ever made was an amplifier I bought in 1998. Had it until it was burnt up in a fire at one of the bars I worked at. Left it overnight because I was working the next night. I have seen the original CAVS jukebox and I saw it crash each time I went to the bar that used it.

I would tell him to go PC if he doesn't want to carry discs. I would also tell him to contact both Chartbuster and Sound Choice about audits so that he has the blessing to use their product in the PC. If he is dead set on the CAVs unit then I would suggest the same.

One more thing PC's are easier to rip to then CAVS from what I saw of the one place in my area that had a unit. They took hard drives out of the unit and connected them to PC's and ripped the hard drive and then put it back into the unit. With A PC you just rip to the drive you are planning on using and you're good to go.

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

I would never consider using CAVS, even if it was offered for me for free. Every CAVS unit I've ever seen has had unacceptably slooooow loading time, and even if free the "cost" to my show is too much, not even considering the last-minute-change-song customers that I get from time to time. No thanks.

i had 2 cavs units lock up tight in one night (when i was working for someone else).
would never consider using them. for $1800.00 he could build a super laptop and have money left over.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

Thanks for the great advices, guys. Your posts definitely changed his mind.

Also, I took him to a karaoke place last night where the guy was running Cavs. He noticed right away that the load time was pretty slow. The KJ's got a lot of dead air, but he had filler music to compensate. Oh, and his cavs crashed. He rebooted and that took a good 3 or 4 minutes.

My friend's been to my show and I am running laptop. It was like one song after another. Once it's cued it will go without dead air. Never crashed either.

He agreed with Paradigm. For $1800 he will buy a Super laptop plus a 1TB external drive, he probably have $600 more to spare. That will go towards buying more SC/CB cdg's Thanks again, guys.

Well, it may be working out for you but you're missing out on so much by not using CompuHost. Forget the others, go with the best. It's like comparing that stupid CAVS unit to the Laptop, which we know won out for your friend.

[quote="Alan B @ Sat Nov 06, 2010 9:17 pm"][quote="Brian A @ Mon Nov 01, 2010 6:45 pm"]I myself am using a laptop/Sax&Dotty program for about 6 or 7 years now. Ok you guys, please don't tell me to change to a better one like, Compuhost, Karma, AutoKJ, etc., because this works for me and I am really happy with it.

I've seen a couple kjs use the cavs units before. I prefer discs myself.

hmmm, have yet to have any more than a handful of software crashes on my laptop and when it does happen, its between songs and the software is restarted in under 5 seconds and we are running again. dont take it onlne to get those pesky viruses either though.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens