Karaoke Forums

Yep, that's what i meant, would you happen to know if that is a seperate plug-in for that?...or does it come installed with winamp?

thanks

One of the features I love about Compuhost is the ease to switch songs before clicking play. I have been using it for a couple of months and love it over all the other software.  The biggest thing I have to get use to is switching from the filler music to Karaoke, Altough lately my gigs have been mostly Karaoke only.  The way I handle it is to start the karaoke with a new rotation with me singing soo that when I finish singing I can do that traditional karaoke method of calling up the next singer. Granted, If I wanted to I could do the baton hand off that is used by 7bamboo, but I feel that method might not work as some of my singers I have to call their names at least twice before they start moving to get the mike. I only run two mikes so if the song that is finishing is a duet, I don't have amike to hand off.

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

It comes with the downloadable MP3+G plugin, which you need for karaoke. It is free.

Ditto for me. We have spoiled our singers though -- they have picked up on how easy it is and will frequently tell us to switch.


We don't use filler music, we don't need it. With the on-screen upcoming performer list, our people are coming to the mic before the previous singer is over. We are typically 10 seconds of pause between singers. And with the auto-fade stop of CompuHost, we often cut off long coda/outro segments to get more singers per hour.

I believe in having plenty of mics, so I have two wireless and three wired, one of which is dedicated to the KJ. One each of the wired and wireless are run through compression, and I can switch to compress a duet mic pretty easy by just switching the insert cable.

So OK how does this on-screen next up work? This is something that might be a help to me. Does it scroll across the top or bottom of the lyrics that the current singer is singing somehow? If it only shows up between singers that wouldn't be a help.

The only thing I'm doing now is pointing to the next up and mouthing "You're next" which works all right most of the time. But there's always some new to the room or not in view.

I wouldn't be interested in 10 second pause. I don't have any pause. The player is set to continuous and if the nest singer isn't up quick I can manually pause the Siglos player with ctrl>A if needed. But they're an active bunch and usually beat the track's opening title to the mic. The middle rounds can be over 20 and every second is precious. So could I set Compuhost up that way too?

Yes, it does. I would have thought it would be distracting, but I find it isn't and have never had a complaint.


They have a setting for that, but I agree there is not much point then.


And just the people walking to the stage takes much more than 10 seconds. Some people like me are ready, but others like to be of the take-my-sweet-time variety.


Almost all quality tracks have 5 seconds of dead time at the beginning and end. So there's your ten seconds.

I think you have to have 5 seconds or so just to stop and start the song with CompuHost. 5 seconds over 60 songs is five minutes, and that is one song a night. Again, you can cut off the end of a song with auto-fade, so you get your five seconds back and more.

Let's put it this way -- CompuHost runs a faster show than any I have ever seen. Some of the queue-a-disk guys can be very quick with cued CDs to avoid the 5-second intro pause, but they lose it back the moment they have to restart a song or wait for a singer to get to the stage.

Siglos Pro has an option for skipping these silent parts of the song.

Not to get off topic, but the option for skipping silence works great. There are some songs that have up to 30 seconds of silence in the beginning.

So what you guys are saying is that Compuhost (and Siglos Pro too) will not just just add another 10 seconds to the dead air already there, but eliminate that and make the time between the last note of previous song and first note of current song a steady 10 seconds regardless of titles -  credits - logos?

Powerkaraoke, I am very happy with your player and because I am also familiar with it will take a good hard look at your hoster when the time comes.

That's where your filler or bumper music comes in - I have gotten so used to the music in my library, I know where the culprits are (one of Bonnie Raitt's songs has a 26-second dead-air slot at the beginning of it!) ... I find those 10 seconds are good for calling up new singers, or making sure they're ready ... sometimes I even have to put the song on 'hold' until they get up.

k

This week we will be releasing a final test build (release candidate) and I expect to have a first official release next week. We are still debating about the price, and currently expect it to be $99. Of course current users get discount.

I'm not qualified or good at beta versions. If anything even hiccuped in the middle of the night I'd probably have a panic attack.

I've been checking your site every few days and will continue to do so, although I'll probably just stick with your player for at least a couple of months more. Just that and the computer are still new to me.

Compuhost has a ticker that runs during the performance at the bottom of the screen.  I have at least one singer who is aware that it is there and is up at my station ready for the mike before I can even call them up. The others seem to be oblivious to it. You can also send messages over the ticker advertising specials or even the scedule of karaoke at the establishment if you are there more than one show. Now if I could get the rest of my singers to pay attention to the ticker maybe I could just leave the autoplay on the filler player on and pass the mike rather than call them up. Although I would miss being able to congradulate a good performance if I did that.

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

Maybe it's our big screen or our group, but people do pay attention to our CompuHost ticker. If you say "Steve, get your song in!" on it, you can bet that he will be up soon because if he doesn't see it someone else will and tell him.

We don't use our promo trailer for that, normally, but we tried it a few times to see whether people are watching. (We put jokes on there too.) They are definitely watching at our show.

Yes ,  the infamous Bonnie Raitt song. That 's the song I used for a test of the Siglos beta, and  the skip worked perfectly. It jumped to the beginning where the music starts. The ability to skip the silence in the beginning is worth at least one extra song during the course of a show, maybe more.  And you have the ability to set the amount of silence at the beginning starting at one second before the music starts.

The beta still has a few things that need some tweaking, but the guys at powerkaraoke are very interested in any input, so I've been really pounding on the beta and giving as much feedback as I can. It's really nice to see that they've used a lot of my suggestions. I know this is off topic, but people should download the beta and give some feedback.

mckyj57,  You sdaid you have both CompuHost and Hoster.  Can you tell  me what the differences are and why you like CompuHost over Hoster?  Just curious.

Can I throw something into the mix here?

OK, so winamp with the CDG plugin will throw a window to 2nd display with lyrics - great...

Look at creating a config for Samurize using WinampMagic plugin.  THEN store the signer name in the comments tag of the MP3 file.  Easy to create a scroller like Compuhost has.  I have been doing this for months.  It lists the currently playing track and the next 3 singers.

I have now, however, bought compuhost because I find it a little more "professional".  But that is purely personal choice.

If anyone wants to see the config, etc.  PM me.

Basically, there is nothing Hoster can do that CompuHost doesn't. There are no pros that I can think of.

The pros for CompuHost are:

 * Keeps outstanding track of rotation.
 * Estimates time of next performance by performer
 * Keeps history between events so that you can usually find a singer's song in their history. Takes 3 seconds -- literally -- to put up a song for them.
 * Search feature allows partial words mixed so that "strait night" gets exactly what I want. With Hoster, you have to get an exact match.
 * Has audio bits to "help" with applause. I only occasionally use this to prompt, and I have some realistic clapping so it isn't so obvious.
 * Scrolling display announces next singers, and allows you to set the number. I use 4, because then I can add new singers at the 5th singer without upsetting people who drop in rotation.
 * Promo trailer at end of scrolling singer announcement display announces upcoming events, rules, etc.
 * Has "video bits" for adds, birthday greetings, etc.
 * Built in "bumper music" player. (I don't use it, but it works fine.)
 * Built in volume control and eq for music.
 * Statistics give interesting information about most popular songs, singers who do most unique songs, etc.

In short, CompuHost blows away Hoster in my opinion. The only thing Hoster does is allow you to see all the queued songs in one screen, but I don't really care about that.

Thanks.  Appreciate your response.

I did think of one thing Hoster does, which is read a CD from a user and put it in the playlist. We just use a separate CDG player or Siglos.