Karaoke Forums

I've been using Power CD+G to create custom disks from songs I've purchased from Tricerasoft and Select-A-Track.

After carrying my home setup over to my sisters house for her daughters New Years party I decided I need to go digital and so I bought Siglos Karaoke Pro and am ready to start ripping cd's.

I was hoping to get some feed back from you guys/gals on things I should consider while ripping.

What rate would you suggest?
What output format?

Anything else I should consider before I start ripping?

Thanks in adavnce!

Some people will tell you 384K bps. That is not necessary. Tests show 192Kbps is virtually indistinguishable in quality from the CD. You could bump it to 256K but I don't think it is necessary.

Read rate should be auto -- I have gotten flawless rips using PowerKaraoke.

(I assume you aren't ripping the ones you downloaded from Tricerasoft. There, you should just use what they gave you.)

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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 rip at 256K MP3. Even at 192 I have still found songs where I can hear the artifacts in the high end, 256 is where I stop hearing the difference so I don't go any higher as to me that'd just be a waste of disk space.

Now if you want lossless audio quality, then you should be ripping to WAV, but the amount of space required to store .wav files over comparable 256K MP3's is astounding (about 5-6 times as much space requirement).

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Thanks for the insight.

Using an older laptop and external hard drive. Would it be better to set output format to CDG + MP3 or ZIP? I realize ZIP will save me some hard drive space, but will it slow down the performance of the player accessing the database?

Also what should I consider when setting output file name mask?
{Song} pulls info directly from FreeDB, but have you found the need for album info or track #?

How you store the files really is more a question of the software you'll be using to play them. Storing them in zip files really doesn't save you much space at all. The MP3 is already a heavily compressed file so there is very little compression that can be achieved on it when moving it to a zip. The reason for using zips is one of organization. Keeping the files together in a single zip file makes it easier for you to arrange and for the player software to deal with in many cases. That said, some software actually prefers that they're not zipped. Personally I don't zip my files after ripping them, AutOKDJ does a great job with MP3+G's unzipped.

The same would go for the file name. Find out if your software has any special requirements for the naming. AutOKDJ has a specific format that it uses to parse the Artist, Song name and track number information. Beyond that, just use whatever makes it easiest for you to manage the files effectively.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Thx Tony!

Just didn't want to spend hours ripping to realize I should have done it differently.

With hard drive space being as cheap as it is today, there is no reason anymore not to rip at the best quality IMO. I have seen 2 terrabyte drives for under $100 on sale. Back when hard drives were smaller & more expensive, then the ripping rate made more of an impact, I once bought a 180gb external for almost $500, now that same drive would be worth $30! I don't necessarily see a need for ripping to wav, but a 320 rip is not going to be much bigger than a 256 rip.

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

I second 192kbit, more is really a waste of hard drive space. I keep mine zipped, for organization purposes (like Tony mentioned) and it does save a little bit of space per file. Computers nower days are fast enough to deal with the unzipping process without problems. So regardless what player you will use, it is save to say that you wouldn't notice any slower performance by zipping them.

2TB $99
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... tigeremail

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

Thanks for the link Lonman!

No prob. Don't know how many songs you have to rip, but even in wav format, you are more than likely never going to fill this up. I have over 1600 videokaraoke files that I ripped at high quality, each one yields approx 100mb for a 3 minute song, these all fit comfortably on a 250gb hard drive. A song ripped to a wav file (best quality), that 3 minute song would be aprox 30mb. So on that 2 TB hard drive at BEST wav quality, you'd be able to store around 69,000 songs! So ripping preference is no longer an issue, rip at the best rate (again 320 would be more than sufficient) & have at it! This way there will never be a need that arises where you'll say to yourself - oh man I wish I would have done that better.

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

Last time I re-did my book it was about 3000 songs. So compared to most on this board it's not a huge undertaking, and yes that 2TB will probably more HD than I'll ever need. I'm sure it will fail long before I fill it up....

Bought a CDG at lunch and just wanted to compare file sizes. It was a All Star Karaoke Disc with 8 songs and 8 vocal versions. I chose not to rip the vocal versions.

The folder with the CDG+MP3 is 67.4 MB and the ZIP folder was 54.7 MB.

A difference of 12.7 MB for 8 songs or roughly 1.5 MB per song. So yeah not a whole lot of difference.

But at that price you can have a couple on hand for backup purposes!

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

i have mine ripped to wav and use less than half of my 1Tb drive with almost 13,000 tracks. the bitrate 192, 256, 320 has been long debated and some hear the difference, some dont. if you have the space, i dont see an issue with ripping to best quality possible. i use siglos and have not had a problem. that said, it also depends on your system. on most speaker setups i dont hear any difference over 192, but on the Bose there is a noticable difference between 320vbr and wav. try one disc at 192, 320, and wav and see if you notice any difference. if not, the smallest file size may negate the need for an external at all.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

Just my 2 cents here,,,If I had to do it all over again (and I may still do it someday) with the cheap cost of storage-I would rip to wav & cdg and zip for organizational purposes only (no compression).

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

320kb a waste of HD space? you have the spare space in those HD that you will not even have the songs to fill. Use those space. It does not take a longer time to rip at 320 or wav. why go lower?

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Ditto that!!!!!!

But since I am not gonna switch to WAV files, it would take me forever to re-rip, I now rip MP3+Gs at 320, using the lame encoder.

Agree, you need to rip at 256 and higher and most important, a good software ideally built on the Bass engine and that uses a Lame encoder:wink: The software is what's most important, even if extracted in wave, some uses a poor sound engine

The new version of AutoKDJ supports standard naming conventions now.

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