Karaoke Forums

OK, I'm finally converting my discs to comptuer. The computer I have only has 160GB of hard drive. My questions is, can I put all of what I need on just an external hard drive?

I have all my songs (14K plus) on an 160gb with about 30 gb free. These were all ripped at 192.

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Depends on the size of the drive and the total size of the songs you wish to put on there. I would guess you can put 15,000 songs on a drive that size but not sure. Hard drives are so much more affordable these days. You can buy a tera bite for less than $100 now. That should be big enough forever as far as karaoke songs go unless you store other items on there such as movies or videos.

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

Nothing else is going to be stored on it. I have a player already downloaded on the computer to play discs that singers want me to play.
How much memory is needed on the computer so speed is not an issue.
And what else do I need to look for?

As for how much hardware it's going to take; that depends on many things. CDG is about 30 years old so if you're using the right software you can do karaoke on a computer you dug out of the garbage. (I do it. ) If you're running '98 your can get by on 32 megs of RAM. XP 1 gig, Vista 2 gigs, Windows 7...no clue. My advice would be try it and see. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are drempt of by MTU or Compuhost...

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Okay, who took my pants?

Lonnie,

I rip all my cd's with MTU, they come up ripped at 128...how does one change the rip to 192 or anything else for that matter?

MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
Visit MrD on facebook - mrdsentertainment
& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

Since it's based on wma you can only go as high as 192 (still very sound quality). When you are in your cd import screen, on the newer versions 4.x, it's in the bottom left corner the option to change the file quality.
On the 3.x versions it is toward the top - like the second line down.

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Hmmm, that must be with MTU hoster...I should've said with MTU Microstudio 4.20, there is no option that I can find to change import quality, which I've always thought was weird.

MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
Visit MrD on facebook - mrdsentertainment
& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

Microstudio imports as a bin file, uncompressed.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Well, yes I guess you are correct there. So it's mp3 toolz that compresses the file to 128kps?
MrD

Ah, Ha! I just found it in mp3 toolz/options. Encoding to 320! Wonderful, thanks for pointing me in the right direction Lonman! (That means I have years worth of stuff, all not the way I want it.....going to leave as is, maybe work backwards..grandfather everything in)

MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
Visit MrD on facebook - mrdsentertainment
& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

Buy an external to back your music up. If your computer bites the dust, you don't want to rip all your disks again. The size you buy is your choice. How many songs do you want to be able to put on it taking into consideration future purchases.

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

Here's a tip for external drives..

Buy one with an on and off switch..

External drives seem to go to sleep when the host computer turns on any power save function..

Screen saver, Monitor off etc..

Otherwise, turn all those functions off..

Thanks jdmeister, that's a big help, I was also advised to get a hard drive to back up my hard drive. It's not a problem if I need to do that as well.

Well I tried to change all of the options in Mp3+G Toolz to encode to 320. It didn't work, they still come up 128. Anyone else have insight on this?
MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
Visit MrD on facebook - mrdsentertainment
& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

I know I'm new, but I actually have dealt pretty in depth with external hard drives.

If you can't upgrade the internal HD (which is what I'd definetly recommend, its faster and more stable) then you can use an external, but be aware of a few potential problems.

As the others said if the drive is inactive for some time it will go to sleep, so then when you call on a file from it it will take anywhere from 10-30 seconds to wake up and play the file. (Makes for a very awkward introduction if your relying on it to play the intro music)
Another problem I had with mine was if you dont have your sound system properly grounded/ungrounded to your PC your speakers will actually play through some of the noises/frequencies the external drive makes (such as the disks spinning) through your speakers.

In the end I found external drives to be too unreliable to use in a professional application, but hey maybe youll have better luck.

Hmmm, you might want to try contacting them directly. Sounds like the change you made didn't work.

I have no experience with the .net versions. The one I have from mp3toolz is an old beta version that is totally stand alone, and I won't convert... I HATE .net!

Thanks Matt..I'll try that route!

I tried to change the encoding options.....NO difference
I tried to change the zip compression options...NO difference

same 128 and same size after....(I re-ripped a cd from scratch to do the multiple tests).....MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
Visit MrD on facebook - mrdsentertainment
& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

let me send you that beta version... maybe it's the one you're using.

Sending you a pm now with my home email address.