Karaoke Forums

After about 8 month of ripping my CDGs, I finally did my first show with CompuHost last Wednesday. It went well, but some songs had lyrics that were lagging. I know that this is a system performance issue, since they were fine when they were on disc.

Now, I know that my computer is a little too old to run the latest version of DirectX, so I actually already was running my CompuHost in the standard mode instead of the enhanced mode. So that's not the problem.

Someone told me it might help to defer some of the system RAM to the video RAM through the system settings. I only use this 'puter for karaoke, so I have no problem doing that if it will work. Maybe I also need more memory in general? It is upgradable to 1024 mb.

Anybody else have any other suggestions?

My system = IBM Thinkpad A30 - 1.13 GHz PIII, 384 MB RAM

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C Mc
KJ, FL

My first thought was to run it in standard and not enhanced mode. When I had that same issue that fixed the problem. My first response for any performance problem is to add more RAM and see how that works out.

I'm running it on a laptop thats 1.6ghz 512mb ram and am having zero lag problems. I suggest you add more ram.

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

On RoxBox player, the software I use, there is some kind of option for altering the frame rate or lyrics sync or something like that. When I setup my new laptop I had to adjust it to 29.92 from 30 or something. This seems to be like the frame rate of television signals, I think. Anyway, when it was 30 the lyrics gradually got behind the music after a while into the song. When I changed it to the suggested value, the problem was solved. Might your problem be similar to mine? I am not familiar with CompuHost.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

from the compuhost website:
Minimum Hardware Requirements

Windows XP/VISTA 32Bit/Vista 64Bit Users Please Click Here

AMD Athlon XP 1.2/Pentium 4 1.4 or above

512 MB Ram

Suggests to me that it might be RAM and processor speed.

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

does the problem happen with other software playing the files? Winamp?

I'll invest in the RAM to get it up to max specs and see what happens....thanks!!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

If you are going to spend more than $50 to do that, I suggest you don't. A new laptop that will run CompuHost with no external drive needed is $400.00 or so. Spending more than 15% of that on RAM that *might* work in an old laptop -- CPU not meeting the program's minimum callout, mind you -- is probably not a good investment.

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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.

A decent laptop will really run you about $800. I mean something worthwhile. Mine has 4 gigs of ram, and a 320 MB harddrive. However, with Vista being a RAM hog you really need it. Furthermore, you will more than likely have to invest in an external audio interface if you haven't already. The key is to reduce the amount of CPU processing cycles by reducing the background workload of your computer.

I have never had any issues with the video, but I have had serious issues with latency on the audio! Ack! Its taken me some time, but I've turned everything off, including the internal sound card and that seems to have fixed the "skips" that I was hearing. Although, I still hear one on the occasion.

To tweak Vista I:

- turned off all the Vista extras. i.e. it looks like XP
- Use an external audio interface, and turned off the internal sound card
- Adjusted system settings for performance over video. (Karaoke requires very little in the form of video proscessing).
- Turned off ALL non-essential programs, so ONLY microsoft services are running through the start menu.
- Disabled ALL security and firewalls
- Adjusted power options to Performance
- Turned off Vista indexing options for the harddrive
- Defrag often

How do you do all of this? Go here:

http://audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php

Great article specifically for our needs.

Heat is also an issue with laptops. Invest in a good external cooling pad!!!

I would still like to make additional improvements. Right now my interface is USB, but I believe I could further enhance performance by have an audio interface through the express card slot. Anyone out there using one of those??

If so, which one?

How do you like it?

Hope this helps

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Depends what you call "worthwhile". A minimum laptop with 2G and 160G hard drive will run a great karaoke show using CompuHost, and hold 20,000 songs at 256K rip speed. You don't need a huge or hugely bright screen. You don't need super graphics. You don't need much of anything.

If you are talking about a laptop for daily use, that is different. But one that will work great for Compuhost only costs $400.00.

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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.

Yes Mick you are correct, but I would say an S-video output is important (Not just VGA, but in addition to), as is a large hardrive, and a decent screen size. I have yet to find these three features on a $400 laptop... and until you hit a certain price point you won't find them.

For a reliable laptop that not just "runs compuhost" but actually helps your business, $800 is really the price point you need to be looking at. Otherwise, you'll just be spending more money down the road. Settling on something that "gets you by" for the short term is usually a poor business decision.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

I will disagree completely. You don't need more than 160G of space unless you are planning on storing WAVs (or "100,000 songs!"). SVideo is dropping away on high-end laptops too, and it isn't really the best video to use anyway as 1) the connector is fragile and unreliable and 2) distribution amps for doubling output cost more than a VGA->VGA/SVideo/RCA adapter. And you don't need a huge screen to run a karaoke show with Compuhost. I have a 13" laptop screen that works really well.

So perhaps we can agree to disagree here. For a dedicated karaoke laptop, it doesn't take much, or so say I. You can *choose* to buy speed and capacity you don't need now if you want to, but I say you don't have to or even need to. A $400.00 laptop will run a show indefinitely if you are dedicating it to karaoke.

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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 guess we would have to disagree here.

I have 20K plus karaoke songs on my laptop and 10k+ DJ songs... I do both. I have a 320 Gig hard drive, and its about full.

As for S-video, you need a good quality cable for sure. I use monster cable for this and it is more than secure and I do this 5 nights a week. Furthermore, the bars I work at use the new HD plasma TVs and I plug into the RCA jack.

I have a cable from monster that is S-video on one side, and RCA on the other. I plug this into a multi distribution amplifer, and that distributes a high db video signal 4 times. RCA cables can be run longer and cheaper than VGA, and works fine for karaoke.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

At an average file size of 7M, you can fit 20,000 songs in 140G. I have 12,000 karaoke and 2,500 DJ and fit well within that.

If I had more, I could easily move to a $60 USB-powered drive.


It isn't the cable that's the problem, it's stressing the motherboard and connector as you plug it in and out. Not to mention the possibility of breaking a cable pin off in a connector. The D-mini for a VGA is going to handle many more insertions.


My unit provides a VGA for the singer screen, an RCA for distributing to a bar screen, and an SVideo (which I can also convert to RCA) for a second bar screen. All for $33.00.

You can get an HP laptop with 250G drive, 2G of ram, VGA, 15" screen, brand-new for $450 every day. It will easily run a show. Anything more than that is optional. A better one may make more sense for a lot of people, to be sure. It isn't necessary, though. At 256K you can hold 30,000 songs, and at 192K 40,000 songs, easily on a 250G drive.

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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.

in all the years I've messed with S-video I've never had a motherboard s-video connection issue. It's usually been the $2.00 adaptor from SVideo to RCA that will have a bent or broken pin. Or just quit working. But that's happened twice in eight to ten years or so... I've lost more MOTHERBOARDS than any associated peripheral!

Sorry, I'll stick with what works! !

Diagree 100%. I've been running mine on a $220 used Tosiba. I just purchased a used Dell for $280 as a backup. Only time I used the internet was to download compuhost. No problems here. Spend the other $500 on music.

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

I also disagree as I am running mine on a laptop I bought brand new for under $400 and am successfully running Compuhost on it.

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

An INEXPENSIVE dedicated computer can easily host karaoke, but the amount of RAM can become critical if you intentionally have more than the hosting software open during the show

Check your hardware acceleration settings in DXDIAG

Go to Run and type DXDIAG which takes you to the DirectX Diagnostic Tool

Click on the Sound tab

In the middle of that box is the DirectX Features section and has a slider that adjusts the hardware sound acceleration level.

Move the slider to the right and then back to the standard setting. Then try playing known out of sync track with CompuHost. You may have to play with the settings but it sure worked for me.

Don't ask me why but this worked when I had similar problems with sync problems on my MTU hoster program.

I'm not sure if this will work for CompuHost as I have never had the problem. But it is sure worth trying.

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FlipSide Karaoke
Scott

I just bought an externalhardrive 1 terabyte (1000 gigs) 99 bucks at staples. attach that to a laptop,will give you plenty of space.