Karaoke Forums

I finally bit the bullet and bought a laptop. I bought a HP HDX16t off of the dealnews.com coupon site and save over $500 plus a free printer. Thanks to all for the help finding the laptop, it is sweet. Now for the rest of the package.

1. Where's the best place to pick-up compuhost with the back-up disc.

2. I need a list of everything else I need to make the laptop system work.

I already have the amp, mixer and spkr set-up. I just want to move up to the computer world. All help is greatly app. Thanks

OK well you need the hosting software, and it sounds like you've already decided on CompuHost. You'll need software, if not included with CompuHost, to rip your CD+G disks to MP3+G's. You'll also need a cable to connect your laptop's sound card to your mixer. Something like this works in most cases: http://accessories.musiciansfriend.com/ ... sku=330480

You might also want to consider getting an external USB sound card for your laptop. Often times the audio quality is better, especially since many on-board laptop sound cards pick up interference from other components in the computer that can be audibly heard when amplified through a PA. You might also consider an external hard drive to store your MP3+G's on depending on the size of your internal drive.

Finally you'll need some form of video interface and cable. That laptop has a VGA and an HDMI output that could be used for getting the video to your monitor. Now how you do that depends on the type of monitor you have. If it's an older TV with composite video inputs (Yellow, White, Red rca plugs) you'll need a VGA to TV Adapter like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... %20TV%20EZ and an RCA cable long enough to run from that to your TV Monitor. If you have a flat panel or computer monitor with a VGA input, you can just buy a long VGA cable.

That's all you should need. Hope that helps.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

It certainly does, Thanks.

Compuhost comes with CDG rip software, but I don't use it. The CDs always seems to have "messy" graphics when I rip with it. I use "power karaoke" ripping the same CDs and the problem goes away... Thus, I end up ripping them with one program, and then just importing the MP3 file to compuhost.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Is there a better software than compuhost or are they all similar?

Give yourself plenty of time to rip your discs to your hard drive. It takes longer than you think. How many discs to you have to convert to digital? You'll probably need an external Hard Drive for a back up to your laptop hard drive just in case of an emergency. Make sure you get a big enough hard drive. You can get about 25 thousand songs on a 100GB hard drive.

True, if you use the one that comes on the CD. The newer one on the web site is supposed to fix this and use a robust engine like....


Power Karaoke, which I also use because I had it prior to purchasing Compuhost.

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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, the earlier CDGrip supposedly relied on the builtin error correction capabilities (if any) that your particular cd drive provided. (Older Plextor drives included great builtin error correction and quickly became the defacto standard among karaoke hosts, not anymore though) The latest CDGRip (V2) is reported to offer the same error correction capabilties as Powerkaraoke, regardless of the capabities of your drive. It also is supposed to support as may drives as MTU or Powerkaraoke since it uses the same ripping techniques.

If you are not using the latest CDGRip, you need to! Lot's faster, more drives, perfect rips, supports both FreeDB lookup as well as FastTracks database lookup and oh yea, IT'S FREE!

Good luck!