Karaoke Forums

I have seen a few posts that talk about a couple of brands of CDG's and the quality of their music. Is there one post out there in the archives that gives a good rating for all of the different makers or could we make one happen. I want to start building my library and I really need to upgrade in pop and dance music. I am very country heavy making up probably 80% of my 5000 song library because I mostly have done small parties or used the country discs for back-up music when I sing at small dinner parties. Just looking for a way to save a few bucks.

Nipit

There have been tons of posts on this subject ..but to be honest a new one is due.
The number of mfgs of karaoke titles have been dwindled down drastically over the last few years and some new producers have sprung up too. I think today you have a few GOOD brands and the rest so so. I would rate the "better" brands as still
Sound Choice / Zoom / Chartbuster / Pop Hits Monthly / Pocket Songs?

below them IMHO you have all the other brands.

Charbuster is one of the best Country brands out there and both Soundchoice and Pop Hits Monthly have there Pop, Country and urban type releases.
All which have the rare CLUNKERS on them.

Not sure if this helps
IF YOU ARE LOOKING TO BUILD YOUR LIBRARY ON OLDER RELEASES --LOOK AROUND --THERE ARE DEALS ALL OVER THE PLACE --NEVER PAY FULL PRICE FOR A CDG OVER 9 MONTHS OLD

Yeah, I am looking to slowly buy music but I keep seeing the minor brands bouncing around like party-tyme, K-tel, Karaoke, Legends series and others that I just don't know about. I have bought a few Karaoke Bay since getting some good input from the forum. Thanks for your input. It would be nice if we had a sticky thread with each manufacturer listed with a short description of the quality. Might be a biggg job though.

Here's my take.

Sound Choice is good for most things, and is by far the best for most songs that depend on guitar. It has more really strong tracks, and a lower percentage of clinkers, than any other brand.

Chartbuster is real good for country, and for 50s / 60s oldies. Not so much for 70s and 80s with strong guitar lines -- their lead guitar is substandard. If the song depends on pedal steel and fiddle, as much country does, Chartbuster is usuallly the best.

Pop Hits is very good, very authentic general music lines. They also have some excellent lead guitar. I consider them to be underrated -- if they had dot-leaders I would put them right up with Sound Choice. They are often my preferred manufacturer if I have multiple copies of a track.

DK is very good in general sound across a wide range of music. But many people dislike three things -- 1) possible one-step key change on a song that most people have trouble with, 2) the pan flute melody lead, and 3) no coverage after 1996 with only about 1600 songs available.

Zoom is OK, but to be honest I don't get people putting them up with Sound Choice. Much of their stuff is obviously MIDI. They have good lyric production values.

SBI is up and coming. While they aren't SoundChoice quality, they are making lots of songs and they are generally pretty good.

Legends/Sunfly is strange. Their sound is not much like the original many times, but sometimes that is a plus for singing the song. Example -- Cherry Bomb and I Got A Name. Sound Choice and Chartbuster are both "better" in the sense that they are closer to the original, but the Legends is much easier to sing to and sometimes sounds better (perhaps due to hosts not turning up the under-modulated SC/CB versions). I consider Legends to be upper second-tier.

Panorama produces Big Country, Big Hitz, etc. I find their stuff to be decent most of the time. They are one of the ones often used in....

Supercore is a compilation brand. They use Panorama, old Pioneer, Nutech, and even some SoundChoice.

RadioStarz is unusual. They have excellent music quality and poor lyrics production. Accuracy is generally great. Their Steely Dan disk is one of the best overall disks I have ever heard.

Party Tyme is pretty decent. Not outstanding, but usually not *bad* like ...

Monster Hits is better than Music Maestro, but both are very uneven in their quality. Often poor lyrics syncronization. Music Maestro has a few decent things, but overall they have a high percentage of clinkers where you finish the song and think "what was *that*?"

Amerising is often rebadged Sound Choice. What else it is I don't know.

Brands I don't like at all: StarDisc (often *way* off), Top Hits Monthly (poor production, very poor guitar playing, very uneven), Backstage

Poor-quality brands with some redeeming value: Sweet Georgia Brown (very poor lyrics, overmodulated, but often surprisingly good sound), Song Factory (good sound), Nutech (decent overall sound production but terrible lyrics sync and presentation)

Summary: Here are the tiers as far as I am concerned

First tier: Sound Choice, Pop Hits, Chartbuster, DK

Second tier: Zoom, SBI, Legends/Sunfly, Panorama, RadioStarz (*Starz in general), Supercore/Pioneer

Third tier: Party Tyme, Dangerous, Song Factory,

Junk that is very uneven: Top Hits Monthly, SGB, Monster Hits, Stardisc, North Star, Country Karaoke Classics, Backstage

Stuff I know little about but have a generally good impression of: Priddis/Lost Classics, Mr. Entertainment

Ones I know nothing about: Karaoke Kurrents, Karaoke Bay

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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.

Very helpful, Thanks to all.

I would also include "Priddis" as one of the better brands. The graphics are pretty plan jane but are in synch and the music quality is right up there.

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

Now that's the best I've heard from you Have you ever heard a midi file
FYI, they do not use midi but real instruments and are superior than most of the karaoke brands They just have less of that "karaoke sounding" that you're familiar with, like SC

Forgot about them. I only have one disk of theirs (LC007) but what I have seen sounds pretty decent. Their Don't You Care is better than SBI's.

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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 don't have too many of their tracks, but the ones I do have obvious MIDI keyboards and strings. Their Heartlight and Rhinestone Cowboy are terrible -- I have them because I was grasping for a decent version of either. Luckily I found one of the out-of-print SC8347 disks to get Heartlight from (it's the only decent version). I was also not impressed with their Money For Nothing, where I found SBI quite a bit superior.

I will admit their Norah Jones stuff sounds pretty good. But since I don't do that much modern rock, and I have a lot of Chartbuster, DK, and Soundchoice coverage of the classics, I may not have a good enough universe to pick from. Suffice it to say that for country and oldies rock, the tracks I have heard, they don't measure up to Sound Choice, Chartbuster, Pop Hits, or DK.

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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.

NUtech is Midi. so if you've heard their songs you've heard midi.

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

The original NuTech discs were not midi, in fact alot of their original releases were musically copied from Pioneer & Sound Choice. They got nailed around 95/96. Honestly surprised they are still in business after the fines they had to pay.

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

All MIDI is not created equal. Some of it is quite good. Most strings on karaoke tracks are MIDI, and quite a few bass tracks.

I agree Nutech is very artificial sounding. The worst is a disk that got thrown in as a "bonus" on some disk order I made way back. It was called "Honky Cat" and it was the worst possible MIDI you could imagine. It sounded like someone playing one of those $59.00 keyboards.

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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.

Karaoke Bay is very good in my opinion. I prefer them to SC for pop songs... but they are no longer available. They used to be sold at WalMart and were recent up til 2008ish.

For country I prefer Chartbuster every time!! SBI is good for new releases.

My current most disliked brand is Music Maestro. I am trying to replace any songs from them, but unfortunately I bought a couple hundred. Nutech is also in the bottom rung as far as I am concerned.

Otherwise I generally agree with mckyj57.

Some of the older sunfly was not very good but their recent versions have been better.

I consider Zoom to be on par with SC. I also have no complaints on SBI and consider them top tier as well.


Every now and then a good company will make a sub-par version and other companies that generally make bad songs will make an occasional good one.

I don't care much for Music Maestro, but every now and then, they get one just right.

Plus, they offer a ton of collections that just make it easier to buy. For example, I have lots of MM Elvis, country, doo-wop, and Sinatra. It's not top-of-the-line, but it'll do for what I need.

(Wow, I just defended MM.)

I actually like MM for their oldies doopwop type and standards.
New stuff and country ...Not so much

SGBs "Freestyle Jazz" series is outstanding. After that, not so much, but I was so pleasantly surprised to hear the 3 discs in that series.

Sorry to disagree here but I spoke with someone who used to work for Nutech and that is what they told me.

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

Well, that may be the case now, i'm talking years ago. I have NuTech tracks that are indeed spot on copies (musically) of Pioneer & Sound Choice. They were sued back then & have (as far as I understand) have changed those tracks - they may be in fact all midi now days, but that is not how they started. These laserdiscs I bought were around 93-94.

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

So, Nipinthebud this is what I THINK I KNOW:

Karaoke Bay - EXCELLENT, but out of business I hear because of copyright matters. However, they still can be found on line and are available right now at: DollarStoreJunkie http://www.dollarstorejunkie.com And just last week they had them on sale!

Party Tyme - Excellent, but perhaps over-priced? They are completely legal from what I know, so they'll likely be around for awhile!

SIN (Sing It Now) has become part of Pop Hits Monthly. The original discs are very good and can only, generally speaking,l be found on line. In fact, Karaoke.com has them on sale right now! http://www.karaoke.com/cgi-bin/WebObjec ... ow&x=0&y=0

Music Maestro:
a. There is no better collection of DooWop in terms of availability and quality
b. Their "Velvet Elvis" series is incomparable and a "must have" if you want Elvis well-represented in your library?

Legends: Good and bad. You should look to them only when you can't find what you want elsewhere. For example, if you want an entire Bob Marley Disc, Lg161 is what you should get!

Nutech: Produced the savA and savP series. The savA series contains 19 country discs. Each disc has about 18 tracks. There are a few clunker tracks in the series and a several tracks with graphics/swipes that stink. Nonetheless, there are many excellent tracks and tracks that you won't easily find elsewhere. You can find the A set on Ebay for about $39 and that's for over 300 tracks! I don't own the P series and am less familiar with it. It has about 30 discs and contains pop songs. It is also available on Ebay. I intend to get it!

SGB: If you like Jazz, as Karen said, it has 3 great discs. I "cut my karaoke teeth" on SGB at a friend's home on their professional system. They have the full SGB series and rarely have I found a track that I don't like! Yeh, they may be recorded on the "loud" side but if that's a problem for you consider this as your forewarning to turn it down before starting the track. Yep, and some of the lyrics are silly, but few manufacturer's discs have perfect lyrics. The series can be found fairly inexpensively and even if you never use 1/2 the tracks, the series is a bargain. You can get over 900 tracks for $80!

Dangerous: Get the series on the internet. It is available and you won't be sorry;

SuperCore" Good, to very good, to excellent tracks. It's a hodge-podge of different manufacturers as was already explained. As long as you can make use of at least 1/2 the tracks, it's worth getting. To my knowledge a Supercore series was produced for each of the following years: 2006, 2007 and 2008. That's not to say other years weren't produced and aren't available. Supercore can be found at some wholesale karaoke sites and I believe you can also find it on ebay?