Karaoke Forums

I run my shows from a laptop using Compuhost. I am aware of the CDG debate, and have taken a lot on board.

What do I need to add to my system to take advantage of the format?

A dedicated player (I can get a JVC for about £50 - parents) or is there software that will do this?

Compuhosts stance is they will never support CDG disks.

I just use Siglos player, which I bought in a package with Power CDG Burner. I do have to be careful not to read the disk during the CompuHost show, because I did have a glitch one time.

I would probably use Hoster for that if I could install it on a third computer, but it is on my backup laptop and my practice machine which exhausts the installs.

At our service club setup, we are going to stick the CD player back on the new rack setup that will be put in Saturday night. We only get a request for a disk every couple of weeks, but there is a guy who doesn't feel comfortable with the computer and may want to do some DJing. Since we do have the CDs laying around, we figure why not. (Not that they are organized to find things, but hey, he can do that if he wants.)


If that is their position, you would think they would at least put in a rotation marker capability, or custom song title input, to allow you to keep the rotation. Personally I just use "Dancing Queen" as my indication that it is a disk (that was the first song, song 101, that I loaded into Hoster and the one I kept adding to the list by mistake when I hit Enter).

personally, I'd never support a "hoster" system that WOULDN'T support an option a KJ needs.

If you NEED rotation, then get a software that supports that.

If you NEED key adjustment... then get that.

There ARE other options out there.

Cheers for the info - will look into what you suggest.

RE: Compuhost - they do support hardware CGD players via line-in and video capture, allowing you to keep rotation. Just not direct CDG playback.

That would allow me to not have to shell out of Compuhost to swap video sources I guess. Also, I do see aditional benefits of having a hardware CDG player in the mix...

you could always buy the cdg plugin for winamp, and play it directly off the cdg track.

I'm assuming you have the ability to rip tracks...

MTU's hoster has the ability to rip a track while the show continues...

the only reason I mention other software options is I think the physical hardware players are going to completely go away in favor of the software ones! You may be sitting on a situation that eventually you'd ave to convert to something else.

It's why I finally decided to go computer in the first place. The trusted JVCs were gone, and the ones from Pioneer were single tray and expensive!! The advantage of having a permamently stored format was far superior to dealing with cdgs and their issues.

I have read the forum post you are obviously referencing and have spoken directly with them on the phone. No where have I seen or heard that "they will NEVER support CDG disks."!

I have in fact tried using software players (Siglios, Winamp plugin etc.) and ran into too many instances where the disk either would not play due to copy-protection etc., skipped, or produced random visual artifacts.

Compuhost gives you the ability to connect a standard CDG player into the system therefore guaranteeing playback of ALL disks, copy-protected or not, and this is the way I have it.

As for Hoster's ability to "rip a track while the show continues", check their own forums, that feature is horribly unreliable!

tbreen

threen's absolutely right... I've run into more than a few times when hoster wouldn't import the temporary track, either from a multisession disc, or a cdr for some unknown reason. The guy that ran it said he didn't do all the updates to the computer, and found out that was a problem...

I was never that happy with hoster to begin with!

I read a post by a dev on their forum saying the same thing. Software decoding of CDGs is too unreliable, and so they will not dedicate time to further development of this.



I am considering this as a major option. Also would allow me to use it as a standard CD player when needed.



My parents have one in 100% mint condition (used like 5 times). They'd give it to me, but I'd want to give them something for it. They don't "understand" it so, £50 would keep them sweet.

Well well well...

I was trawling through my archives on my server this weekend, and found an email with my registration for the PowerCDG Player software. Completely forgot that I registered it when I first started doing this as a hobby.

Problem solved

sweet!!!

Yeah, nice to find!

I have NEVER encountered an issue with MTU Hoster while ripping a CDG for a singer while the show is running. The thing to remember is that you have to start a computer-based song going...then rip the track. If you start ripping a track before you start the computer-based song, you have to wait for the song to rip (which, btw, doesn't take very long). In fact, I've easily ripped 2 single tracks while a singer is singing.

As most of you know, and if you don't, I'm sure you'll be reminded not long after this post hits the page, I had problems initially with MTU Hoster (it was a new release I started with that had issues which were soon corrected by MTU) but I could NOT be happier with this system since the initial problem was resolved. Totally happy with it. What it offers me I couldn't get in another format - i.e., playing singer's CDGs without having to carry an extra player.

k

I personally don't want to wear out my cd-rom on customer discs that might be damged as well. If I were to allow other singer's discs in my system, I would opt for an outside player.

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

Actually, in reality, I have one singer at one show that brings in her own versions of discs, and hubby's Mon night show has 2 singers who bring in their own...out of dozens and dozens of singers. All their discs are in very good shape. And that's the only use, other than when we buy new music and upload it, that the CD drive gets used. Really quite minimal use overall. And not worth carrying an extra player for sure...Besides, don't have room in the rack anymore - Since we went active (speakers/sub) we have a very small DJ rack and the PC shuttle, keyboard, and screen. I'm not worried about wearing out the drive with that little extra use.

k

and the cdrom drives are cheap and last a long, long time!

Under NO circumstances should you use a PC drive for running karaoke discs during a show. They just don't have the durability for industrial use, and you'll end up wrecking it. USE A DEDICATED CD PLAYER. You can get a good single player for under $200. You then protect the PC drive, yet can use it in and EMERGENCY for backup- a few times. If you buy a decent player you also won't have to worry about effects that your software won't support. Most good ones come with digital keychange and all the other effects that aren't supported. You also don't have to worry about software clashes or problems ( Another reason I'm CD based)

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe, if the dedicated players weren't being halted in production, I don't think this discussion would EVER have surfaced. The point is, there are precious few cdg players that are being produced.

We're not talking about using a computer to play the discs ALL the time. Obviously if you're using a computer, rip to hard drive YOUR OWN tracks, and use the cdrom in the computer for customer discs...

This is something I'll have to face when I get my new gig going... my dedicated player crapped out on me, and I already sold my two work horses (JVC triple trays - Gold models) a year ago when it looked like I'd retired.

I'm faced with the same situation!!

ditto.... been using mtu hoster fo about 5 years never had a problem ripping a customers disc..

Yeah you don't use the cd rom for a dedicated player, just for the occasion someone brings in their own disc. However I will still personally use a standalone player for this as there are a handful of discs that will not play in the computers (anything with MediaCloq) & in some cases will lock the computer to the point of shut down (not often but has happened).

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