Karaoke Forums

I would strongly recommend a Plextor CD-RW for CDG ripping. Many of the tracks I ripped before I got my Plextor have minor glitches in the graphics, which has hardly ever been a problem with the Plextor.

Something else to consider is to rebuild a couple of cheap towers at home just for ripping. I'm talking like a PII or PIII you could find at a thrift store for $20. Drop used IDE Plextor DR-RW drives into them, and you can have them simultaneously converting your CDGs while you're busy doing other things on your "real" computer. It doesn't take much of a computer to do the conversion, I started with an old Dell PII 333mhz junker. Once they're ripped you can easily move them to your external drive you host with across a network or by connecting that drive to the cheapo boxes you use for ripping.

Personally, I hate laptops for DJ/KJ as I don't think they handle the abuse well, but I seem to be alone in that opinion...
I'm also harder than most on my equipment and tend to drink many beers while DJ/KJing. I'm the guy most likely to spill beer in my keyboard. Another used keyboard, $2, repairing or replacing a laptop: $$$$

The most important things on your hosting computer is good sound (most any SoundBlaster compatible 16 bit sound chip/card will give you that) and two independent video outputs with TV connectivity. IE, one output for your monitor (or the screen on your laptop) and another to run to the TVs where you host, such as S-video or composite. While S-video looks better, composite is MUCH easier to work with & split to multiple screens or feed a RF modulator with. You can down-convert S-video to composite, but it doesn't seem to look as good as starting with composite. On many laptops the external video output merely mirrors the output on the screen which is NOT adequate for karaoke hosting. (Saw someone do that once; I had his gig the next week. He was also streaming his karaoke songs from YouTube! ) There are devices which connect to your USB that'll give you an extra independent TV video out, but they're pricey and too unstable IMO. It's not hard or expensive to build a mini-tower and put in a video card that supports two screens with one being a TV-compatible video out. I'm currently using an Nvidia GeForce 6200 OC and it's been great. I started with an old ATI with RCA composite output I got used for $5 that didn't conflict with the on-board video on the previously mentioned olf Dell PII and that worked great too. The only reason I ever stopped hosting with it was after 3 years of hauling it from gig to gig (and several drops) I literally beat the hell out of it to the point it died.

Finding an older model Plextor is not as easy as one would think, at least one in good condition. Usually if one is getting rid of their drives is because they have already worn out. The newest models don't read cd+g, at least by CDRwin or Microstudio standards, anymore. And I have had better rips with an older HP8100 than any plextor I have used.

Another thing to remember is to check the track listings with the CD cover and dont just trust the online databases.

The origional definition of 1x speed is the speed of the music CD, so a normal 15 song disk with 4 minute songs should take 1 hour.

1x speed is about 150k a second transfer rate so for a FULL CD of 700mb that is about 75 minutes.

I think the 15 minute estimate is from running at 4x. (and not totally full CDs).

I haven't tried any really never models as my Plextor has been so good to me!

OK I thought I was going crazy so I tried it out.

Using Power Karaoke set at a rip speed of 1X with a bit rate of 192 I just ripped a 17 song disc with a total of 72:09 minutes of karaoke songs and it took 20:47 minutes or about 4:25 minutes a song and when finished left a foot print of 129MB unzipped then I zipped it took 1:34 minutes and left a footprint of 97.3MB.
Total time 22:21 minutes including zipping after the fact.

To further test things I ripped a Music CD at the same speed with 10 songs total of 39:12 minutes and it took me 10:22 minutes.

So I don't know what ripper program you are using that takes 75 minutes to rip but it seem a little slow to me.

Yeah Plextor dropped cdg ability about 3 years ago or so.

Lots of interesting info and debate going on.

However, I'm still stuck. I downloaded the demo of Power Karaoke's Power CD+G Burner. It said it would rip the first minute of the first five tracks zipped. Now where do I go to see if it really did?

Also, still wanting some advice on good dependable laptop options.

OK I give up all I know is what it is doing.
Using Power Karaoke with a Lite-On CD-RW SOHR-5238S drive that is capable of 52x, which I will stick with as it reads error free.

I'm thinking your time is a little off. I rip at 1X and a 15 song disc only takes 15 minutes so that makes it 4 discs per hour maybe a little longer depending if you have to change names and such so 2000 discs would be 500 hours or so.

If the discs show wear it is better to rip at 1X so you don't get errors.

Mustang do you really have 2000 discs? If you do I'm sure that a lot of the songs are dupes and could be eliminated while ripping. As for HD size I have a little under 14000 songs (no dupes) and it only takes about 55gb ripped at 192 tis why I only have a 320gb hard drive.