Karaoke Forums

Hi, new to the forums here. Just wanted to ask some questions:

I am thinking about purchasing a cheaper model laptop to run my karaoke show on. I am currently planning on using Winamp + MP3+G plugins to display the CDG files, and either a VGA to composite video (RCA) adapter or an S-Video to composite adaptor for the signal to the TV, depending on what the laptop has for video out ports. I am also planning on using Audiograbber to rip my entire Sound Choice karaoke CD library to an external USB hard-drive, which I would then connect to the laptop.

I am considering buying an external sound card as most lower-end laptops I have looked at have onboard sound hardware and I want the best quality sound I can get of course. Does anybody have experience with these cards and are they generally a good idea when high sound quality is a must?

Also when using the S-Video or VGA ports on the laptop, will it cut out the laptops screen and only display on the TV or will both display at once?

I can speak to this issue -- both will display at once.

You use what is called "extended desktop" mode, and all karaoke software I know of operates with that just fine. That means you can be lining up songs on your laptop screen while the lyrics proceed apace on the television coming from the S-Video out.

You plan to extract using that new laptop? If yes, make sure it reads cdg properly! Most drive now are cdg compatible but not all will give you a clean graphic.  For the onboard audio, it is possible to get a good sound using some onboard audio chip, and if you order a Dell, you have the option to select the Audigy audio chip.  Be careful when you say cheap, I would recommend building a Dell on an XP Home with an Intel processor and the audigy audio chip, you'll be surprise how cheap you can get them and in my opinion, far better than the Toshiba, HP & Acer! Most brand won't let you custom build your own and will only offer a Vista (yark), poor video card, 5400 rpm drive and no audio option!

Well, I plan on doing the ripping with my desktop, which has already proven capable, and since I'll be transferring it all to an external HD I can just switch it over to the laptop when its complete. I must have missed the Audigy option on Dell, I did like the fact that you could still order with XP installed since Vista is a real piece of crap. I think I would still rather go with an external sound card, unless that would be essentially the same thing as the Audigy onboard.

It's good to know that I can see the display on both the laptop screen and the TV, but I'm not sure when using Winamp that I will be able to use the computer while someone is singing, it seems that they would see exactly what I see. Luckily I can line up a playlist with winamp and just pause it between songs, as I would have to call ppl up anyway. Also I would have background music when calling up ppl, I'm not sure yet if I want it in the winamp playlist or on pause in another audio player like Itunes or Windows Media ready to go between singers.

Yes, you'll be able to work on your laptop while the graphic is showing on the monitor even with Winamp, just use the extended desktop mode like mcky said.  Now, if you wish to improve your sound, I would suggest using a better player than Winamp, check out this player, it's FREE and it will do what Winamp does but with a MUCH better sound!

http://www.karafun.com/

Your external audio option is limited to usb but will have very little impact if you wish to use a player that has such poor sound like winamp, I would still suggest the use of a good player that uses the Bass audio engine combine to an onboard audio chip that's in your Dell, just wait and see how clear it sounds...

PS. Make sure to use a good LAME encoder (ver.3.97) at 160k+, I recommend 192k. Audiograbber is by far THE best extractor but the quality of the encoder is very important, DO not use a commercial encoder, it will destroy the sound!

based on your recommendation, I finally downloaded the free version of karafun, Micky.

I do like the excitement of the background window, with pictures, flames, etc...

but I can't find any kind of search window, other than the playlist window. With windows explorer, you can "enqueue into winamp" or "play in winamp", but I don't see options like that with karafun.

Something that's very important to me.

sure, if you know where to look, I'll admit that I like the karafun MORE than winamp. Winamp sometimes hesitates when you do too much, and I've been playing around with karafun,and I've not ran into that problem yet. Also, with karafun, you can play the video karaoke (pioneer, top tunes, etc), where I needed another option with winamp. I like the mic option, but haven't played around with it.

If you can tell me how to do the search thing, I wouldn't mind going behind karafun totally!

Hmmm, I'm afraid it doesn't have a search engine??? I'm still learning about this software to be honest, it's probably more of a home software which is good for me but, let's see... I think it has lot's of features and yes, I find it to be very stable too, never had an issue yet! The search is not really a big thing for me cause all my files are tagged so I can import in the library and do my own search but like I said, I'm no KJ and you guy's know more than me about what's needed to run a show!

I love the control panel, it has everything you need for recording! Now one problem I have with this sofwate, it doesn't seem to work with my pro card (Emu-1212m) on my desktop, I got no sound! Perhaps it doesn't support Asio? I know the software is build on Bass so it should... I'll get in contact with the creator...

I ran into a horrid snag with karafun!!

While recording the song I just did (laser version of Xmas song, recorded as .mpg), I played it first on windows explorer. Played like a charm. Played it on karafun, and it worked, but cut off the last ten or twenty seconds of the song... played it again, and sure enough, in windows media player, it showed the song as 2.43... yet it played for another ten seconds to finish the song. Karafun saw the file AS IS, and flat out stopped it at 2.43... where Windows Media played the whole thing...

now as I had NOT done the initial recording of this particular song to mpg format, I can't vouch for how it was ripped from the laser.

VERY interesting bug! AND not wholy Karafun's problem... as I said, the original file wasn't set up right as far as the time issue...

Ok I'll try out Karafun, I don't like the idea of not having a search option, while running a show that could be a problem.



I have the LAME encoder but probably not the latest. With audiograbber I can extract CD quality, although each song on the Sound Choice discs are like 50MB when ripped at highest quality, which means that a CD is almost 1GB. No big deal though, I'm getting a large HD to support the Library. Well, anyway I'm out the door now, but I'll try out Karafun when I get back, perhaps I can figure out a way to search without using karafun.

well, you can use a standard window's search... or in my case, I have a .txt file of my master song list. just do a CNTL-F on that and find what I'm looking for!

winamp might hesitate a bit with that, but so far, not karafun!

if you are planning to run a professional karaoke show, step up and spend the $150 for a good program.  i use hoser by mtu, but i've heard good things about other pay programs as well.

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All work and no play make Homer something something

TAKE OFF! !

Pay programs don't necessarily make the big difference. First of all, you have to KNOW how to use them. Many of the hoster type programs I've tried all have a rotation software that I found PERSONALLY to be a nuisance. I much prefer to have the slips or sign up sheets / whiteboard to be far easier, and I just use the program as a player only. For my uses in pro shows, the winamp / windows media worked great! Since I detest rotation software, I found clubdjpro to be a good high dollar program that played my videos, mixed between the two "players", did key adjustments, etc...

I don't know about hoser, but I've heard good things about Sax and Dottys, which is only like $60. I checked out karafun and there are some good things about it like the animated backgrounds on the lyrics, and the ability to insert any picture. But, it seems overly simplified, and the lack of an integrated search feature is annoying, although putting my entire library in one folder and just keeping the windows search feature open would be a way to add songs to the playlist.

Sax and Dotty's is a very poor choice in my opinion. It was in use at the service club I co-host at, when we had an outside karaoke host. (NOTE: I was not involved in sacking them -- I didn't get involved until after they were gone and the others at our club were struggling with doing it themselves. I helped bring the show back up to snuff by improving the sound equipment settings and training their volunteer host.) Since the host could never get the key change feature working, it isn't much different than Winamp and it's media library.

I recently purchased Compuhost after researching them all. It is expensive, but worth it. Just the ability to promote yourself and your venue's events on screen will pay for itself in no time -- our club manager is happy about the ability to promote the next day or week's event in the promo trailer after the list of upcoming singers.

It's display of upcoming singers 1) saves time because people are prepared to sing and walk toward the mic and 2) prevents all the "when am I up" questions. If they do ask "when am I up", you can say "Current estimate is 10:48" and be within a couple of minutes.

Some people like filler music -- I personally don't. But if you do, Compuhost has nice features for it. We bought a couple of CDs worth of TV themes, and everyone is enjoying guessing the theme that plays in between songs. We don't have much time between, though, because of the singers being aware of when they are up. They are ready to go.

We bought two copies (one for me personally, one for our club) and so we have the ability to circumvent problems with the one big minus for Compuhost -- its hardware-based dongle. If you lose that, you have lost the program. But now we have two copies, so if one gets lost then we won't be out of immediate luck.

All in all, after two shows using it, I wouldn't consider going back to Hoster, which I used before. The singers like it a *lot* better, it empowers them quite a bit more than when they had no idea who was coming up. It promotes rotation fairness, since they can watch the upcoming singers and see how that changes.

Disclaimer: I am not a pro karaoke host, I do private parties and volunteer work for state parks, a service club I belong to, and churches/schools. But I have now done about 20 gigs, so I guess I qualify as a working host.

one thing I would recommend if you havent already purchased a laptop, is that you steer clear of anything with a celeron chip. AMD or pentium no celeron, they are not designed to play music reliably for extended periods of time

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

1: if you get Roxbox you get the bass audio plugin that improves the winamp sound.
2: PowerKaraoke's CDG burner works better than Audiograbber.   Even though Audiograbber reckognizes both of my desktop drives as CDG capable it leaves artifacts in the grphics.  I reripped the same song off of the same disc with PowerKaraoke's program and got a perfect copy (no artifacts).

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

I checked out Compuhost's site and that's what I'm looking for. One thing though can the scrolling "next-up" text be turned off when ppl are singing? I can see some possibly hating that.




Yup, I used to have a celeron processor and I know they suck so I'll steer clear of them in the future.



I'll try out RoxBox but so far I'm really interested in Compuhost.

It has a setting for that, but I can't seem to get it working. I thought it would be a problem, but no one has complained. (I don't look at the lyrics much anyway, so it doesn't bother me when I am singing.)

If you have a very small amount of dead air, you wouldn't get much of a chance to see it anyway, so I think to be effective it has to be on all the time. We set it at speed "1".

In any case, no one has complained and a lot of people have complimented us on the change.

I've seen in several places on this forum where people have expressed their dislike for Sax & Dotty's.  I'm not asking people to trash talk the program but I don't see what's so bad about it.  Especially the latest version that just came out.  Now you don't have to switch between the different veiws anymore, the search engine is on the same screen as the singer que screen, you get the scrolling next up singer banner as well as a welcome banner.  So what's so bad about S&D?  

Also, does anyone know how to get Roxbox off of your computer?  I d/l the trial version to see if I liked it, and I don't, but I can't figure out how to remove/uninstall it.  I looked in the add/remove software section of the control panel, and it wasn't in the list.  I also looked in it's folder under the start button and there was no uninstall thing there.  So how do I remove this program?

Yes, click "File|System Devices and Options" from Compuhost's Main Menu. Then click the "Scolling Rotation Setup" button. From their you'll click the "Hide Scolling Rotation During Performances" option.

tbreen