Karaoke Forums

It's been at least a year since anyone has brought in their own CD for me to play... so I've taken the plunge and gotten rid of my trusty old machine. It's served me well over the years, but one of the drawers was getting temperamental, and it's usefulness has become more and more limited.

It hasn't saved me much as far as weight is concerned, but it's freed up a few more rack spaces for another toy or two.

Just wondering how many others here have dumped their CD playing ability... especially rack-spaced equipment, and what (if anything) have you stuck in its place.

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Earl
(BS, PHD & Certified CurmuDJeon)

[font=Times New Roman]"Growing Old may be mandatory... but growing UP is still optional."[/font]

I dumped mine Jan 1, 2016 and haven't looked back. I do play lots of thumb drives. I haven't added any new gear .....YET!

Same here 3 weeks ago. No more cdgplayer unit; gained more space. But not completely dumped my cdg capability because I still get them every now & then. I follow Elem. Penguin’s advice. Use the power cdg player pro $39. http://www.powerkaraoke.com/src/dnl_eval.php

Cd in the laptop drive, from main screen, I play then pause the song. Drag the player half-way right before the full screen playback button. Press play, then immediately click the full screen button. The extended display will show a full screen with no control buttons showing.

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To be fortunate enough to derive an income from a source as fulfilling as karaoke music has got to be as close to heaven as we can get here on earth!

Dumped mine about 10 years ago when I went computer based, but like Brian, I make sure my laptop has an internal drive capable of reading a CDG disc. I don't use it to play them during a show, but in the rare case where a customer has a version of a song I don't have, I just rip it to the hard drive before they come up to sing it. It solves the problem of possible skipping during playback. If it won't rip 100%, it would most likely skip during playback as well. Also, I keep the ripped files in a separate folder until I can get a legal copy of the song. The only exception is Sound Choice songs, but once I explain to singers how Sound Choice operates these days, they have no problem singing a different version.

This is extremely rare these days. I haven't had a singer bring me a disc in over a year. They've all pretty much switched to PC based at home and bring me USB drives with songs they've downloaded, but even that has slowed down because now they will just message me days before a show and tell me what new song they want to sing and where to download it. I've tried to encourage people to do this because I'd prefer to download new tracks in my spare time rather than during a show, and it's been working great.

still play discs when needed, mostly at the private clubs (VFW, DAV, Legion). Siglos plays directly like a few other softwares do. actually get better results than with an external player since it uses the same error correction that Power CDG Burner uses so graphics issues and skips are almost non-existent.

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

Same here, I use Siglos and if I need to, I can play a CDG from my internal drive so I haven't carried my player in a while now.

Same here... I use MTU Hoster, and play directly from laptops internal drive, either directly from cdg, or making a temp file, and placing it in rotation... Hoster's error correction is also very, very good... But I still use my 15 yr old Plextor external for ripping new discs at my home studio... allows me to use the laptops player, and laser just sporadically, when needed at a show... I still have one customer that carries his custom discs when he comes to town, but I think I have slowly weaned him over to my file versions, and he now trusts me when I say to pick the version that I have listed in my books... As I have already culled the worse versions, and the proof is in the tasting, and most of the time, it's not the Sound Choice version, that is the flavor of choice!

Had a 60 cycle hum coming from my payer. Pulled it out more than a year ago. I haven't looked back. Nobody brings me discs to play. They know I won't play SC music. They know I can buy, most everything they need.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

i don't get a whole lot of discs, but the ones i do get handed are ones i can't really get anyway (nor would i have a huge lineup of people wanting to sing from the Chartbuster Bluegrass Gospel disc). not that i get them very often either.

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

I haven't used CDs for quite a while now, and very happy about that.

I also don't allow any non authorized device (USB drives, smartphones, etc.) to be plugged into work computers. I used to, but changed my opinion from OK to no when we almost caught a virus from someone.

While I'm not worried about outright theft of my catalog, it can be done with today's flash drives, so it's something I had to consider when bringing employees into the business.

Policy is I will buy the song at no cost to the singer if it is available. They are cheap enough that even if it's a "one and done" it's no big deal.

I still have and use my cdg player. I still get people with their own discs although not as often as days past. Usually discs I do not have nor can get anymore. I could use MTU Hoster to play cdg (plus it would give the added benefit of using Breakaway Audio Enhancer in the computer), but I purposely built my show computer without a DVD drive and it's just as easy to use the actual player.
I did get rid of my laser disc player recently, used to have people bringing in those discs some time ago but haven't seen one in probably 5 years or so now.
Actually getting more flash drives lately.

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

I removed my CDG player 3 years ago. But I can still play customers disc using MTU Hoster.
You can play direct or Hoster will rip to a temp file and it automatically deletes it after you play it.

I kept mine until last month. I finally got a Sony Viao laptop and it plays cdg's from the internal drive flawlessly. I also updated my Compuhost software to V3 so I'd be able to play cdg's from the laptop.

I waited so song to do the upgrade because i wasn't hosting very much and didn't know if I really wanted to continue hosting. But then got the Elks lodge gig and I'm having fun again and remember why I started hosting karaoke in the first place.

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It's all good!

I stopped using a disc player 10 years ago.
I haven't had anyone bring in a disc for me in over 3 years.
I've never had someone hand me a flash drive.

My current collection stands at almost 30K unique tracks (85k+ total) and 90 percent of those are 320 bit rips from OEM discs. The odds are overwhelming that if you have that disc, I already have it too.

That being said... just last week, I picked up two SC Spotlight series discs. One was for Clarence Carter - Slip Away (the choice was SC or RB? and the SC was available on Ebay) and the other was for an SC show-tunes disc that had the Spanish version of "Time To Say Goodbye" by Andre Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. The Spanish version is listed as a bonus track. I prefer to have the CDG in my collection and am willing to spend a little to make that happen.

The only real suggested alternate is You-Tube and I flat out refuse any and all You-Tube requests. Sorry, no. If I don't have that song and it is not available from a legit source, it will not be played. Choose another song.

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Never the same show twice!

I am only at 20K (30K total counting dups). Back in the day I didn't have the means to purchase everything from every brand to get that one or two songs I needed so I was very selective and only bought a disc if it had half or more of songs I didn't already have and pretty much stayed with only a few brands as a rule (SC, CB, PHM) pretty much. So there are many discs out there people bring me in which I DO try to get if I can find them so they don't have to bring their disc anymore (sometimes I get lucky, other times not so much) that the songs ONLY reside on those rare discs - not even download versions. Today I don't mind if I find a disc with duplicates, but do not purposely try to look for them if I already have a good version.

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

I am only at, around 7,000 songs.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

When I started (6 years ago) I had a single rig with dual CD+G players. That is the only rig I ever had a dedicated player in. We have software on our laptops that can play CD+G's but we just don't have people bringing in discs.

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-Chris