Karaoke Forums

Hi,

I'm still trying out a few trails of various software’s.

In short, what is the best software to cover these items:

Vocal cancel
Key change

Those to things need to work right, IMO, or you just can't KJ with confidence.

Why would you need vocal cancel to KJ? Or, key change for that matter? None of the digital key changers work very well IMHO. I don't think that having a key changer is going to make or break a karaoke show. It's not about the singing, it's about the party.

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Okay, who took my pants?

Hi,

Well, let me put it this way...

There are many ways to but together a KJ library; you can buy the CD's, buy a player loaded with songs, download them off the net both legal and not, and you can buy a hard drive with a 100,000 songs on it. In that data base you might be 40,000 unique songs, and all the rest might be doubles, triples, etc. In that data base there might be a bunch of songs which, while the have the CDG attached to them, they also have vocals. When looking at the search screen you may see 2 dozen copies of the same tune, not knowing which one may have the vocals or not. This is why a vocal cancel option would be nice, in theory, for some jockeys.

As far as a key changer goes, you are right that the majority of the public will just struggle through the song and have fun with it, as they should. However, there is a minority who would like to step down or up a song to fit their range. As a professional, we might as well try to accommodate them all.

That said, a professional wouldn't buy bootleg songs I suppose......

You said it. You won't find any support here for buying loaded hard drives. It is illegal, and no discussion of it is held here. We don't recommend any buy them.



As was said, vocal cancel does you no good at all. Zero karaoke hosts use it live. Not some, not a few, ZERO.


Here I agree with you. A key changer is important, and works well for its purpose. Sure there are "artifacts" and it won't sound perfect, but most of them are good enough for use. A notable exception is the one made by Tricerasoft, i.e. for JustKaroke. I consider it unusable.

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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.

I would if I had the ability to do so. A number of Nutech songs have multiplex vocals on them. Having a multiplex function would help out those who have these songs and can't use the CDGrip software made by the makers of Compuhost to import them without the vocals. PowerKarake has a program that will take a file that is already in karaoke format. When I was disc based I used it all the time when my nutech songs were requested. I even used it on Top hits monthly so I could just go 1-9 instead of trying to figure out the number for the nonmultiplexed version.

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

That isn't vocal removal. That is the L/R/Both multiplex button like you have on MTU Hoster. All it does is send the left channel of the MP3 or WAV file to both channels. I don't know if CompuHost has the equivalent or not -- haven't noticed it.

Multiplex karaoke songs are done by putting the vocal and the music on the right channel (or left channel, I think it can vary). Then the instrumental-only is on the left track. There are numerous ways that you can use only the left or right track, which will take away the vocal. If you run in mono, just unplug the right input from your player.

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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.

*** You said it. You won't find any support here for buying loaded hard drives. It is illegal, and no discussion of it is held here. We don't recommend anyone buy them. ***

Didn't say I did but, I have friends in low places.

*** As was said, vocal cancel does you no good at all. Zero karaoke hosts use it live. Not some, not a few, ZERO. ***

Agreed. Multiplex songs are manipulated live, vocal canceling would not be done live. Sorry for the confusing on my part.

*** Here I agree with you. A key changer is important, and works well for its purpose. Sure there are "artifacts" and it won't sound perfect, but most of them are good enough for use. A notable exception is the one made by Tricerasoft, i.e. for JustKaroke. I consider it unusable.[/quote] ***

Okay, I'm getting to understand all of this.

Thx for your honesty and help mckyj57.

*** That isn't vocal removal. That is the L/R/Both multiplex button like you have on MTU Hoster. All it does is send the left channel of the MP3 or WAV file to both channels. I don't know if CompuHost has the equivalent or not -- haven't noticed it.

Multiplex karaoke songs are done by putting the vocal and the music on the right channel (or right channel, I think it can vary). Then the instrumental-only is on the right track. There are numerous ways that you can use only the left or right track, which will take away the vocal. If you run in mono, just unplug the right input from your player. ***

Thx for this. This is correct. I used the wrong term. I haven't seen pros use vocal caceling live, the other poster was right. I've seen them deal with multiplex songs live. Much different, sorry for the confusing on my part.

Thx again.

At the mixer level:

I don't use the stereo input for karaoke track, I use 2 mono line input. The stereo input are for filler music. For multiplex tracks I just mute the channel with the vocal.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

That's a great fix!

Thx!

Mckyj57, will you PLEASE stop speaking for all kjs?? I use the vocal cancel option when some singers come in wanting to sing songs that are not commercially available.

The version of Winamp's pacemaker I use even has a vocal reduction option.

And yes, I have a couple of multiplex discs that I have to do the L/R option to cancel out the lead vocal. I just use the PC's L/R volume control.

Live, without lyrics?

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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.

Yeppers!

I too have had singers bring in cd's and perform LIVE and use a vocal reducer with winamps pacemaker. Some just love to sing new songs that have not been converted to karaoke yet.

L.W.

Well, don't that beat all. I take back my ZERO, never heard of this.

It isn't something I have ever seen, though. And it has never been discussed here as a feature for systems, so I suspect it is a blue moon type of affair.

I actually have the feature on my Behringer mixer, but have never used it nor had anyone try it. I have always found my vocal reduction experiences to be non-satisfactory.

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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.

Your experience is because there is not one live vocal reducer that gets it all. Especially if they've panned the vocals to the left or right. All vocal reducers that I have heard of does only center panned reductions. I say reductions because no vocal reducers can remove everything. The only software that comes close is Vogone III but it doesn't do it live.

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

I get it on rare occasion as well. Someone will bring in their own regular music cd & knows it works with the vocal eliminator & will sing without the words. Maybe once a year, but it does happen.

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and you're abosolutely correct! MOST don't! ANd I always warned people all it does on normal cds is remove some of the midrange, and it'll sound "off"...

To be honest Mckyj57, this is one of those things us seasoned KJs usually had experience on the older machines! Probably one reason you haven't dealt with it is your area you operate, size of your crowd base, and just the times... most people know that the cdgs are available, and quit trying to make a home-based effort!

IN fact, on the PC for the reduction, I've only had ten songs out of 4000 devocalize satisfactorly MYSELF. I've seen a few others that did well with it, but I suspect it wasn't a simple devocalizer method.

Pioneer Laser players had a true MPX option that was MORE than the simple L/R option. I have a NuTech cdg that I used on that player that would keep the background singers, remove the lead vocal, and made for a good singing experience. Nowadays, I can only pan out ALL vocals, and it leaves the experience far less than it's supposed to be. Thank gawd they didn't keep that experimental option a standard feature for the cdgs!