Karaoke Forums

And then they should wav goodbye...

And this is exactly why you only need a boom box, a fisher price mic, a pirate library and expect to get paid for it............ Exactly my point!!!

I have created material for the super bowl...really! Early 90's.
There is a compromise here that seems to be getting missed. It's not about the pristine quality of the tracks as some lo fi stuff actually sounds great. Its not about whether or not the audience notices the difference. It's not about Bragging rights. Its about providing what the audience needs but doesn't know it in a reasonable quality fashion.
I want to have fun too! I want to feel the track without having to crank it so loud it hurts. I want want to mix the singers (and I have done pro singers in concert who SUCKED!) INTO the tracks intead of On-Top. I want the singers to get lost in the experience and want to come back for more. Hell I even have a band gear background being printed up (good for selfies ).

196 is not bad, 256 much better (chartbuster SD cards are at 256). I was just surprised and annoyed that the KV tracks were not at least 196. There is no high end sizzle for me to exploit and at low bit rate the low notes affect the compression so they have to be suppressed (lack of Balls). Ear fatigue has always been an issue of mine. Nothing wrong with low bitrate stuff per-se but mixing it with better stuff is the way I WILL go. I would like the luxury of working with the tracks, not against or despite them.

Look... I've been through this before. There are a couple of guys in Fla who are doing it very similar to what I'm building. They do better one or two nights a week than the pirates at 6 nights a week, because people want to go to their show because it is an "event".
They are not the most entertaining people, they are not audiophiles. They create an environment where ever they go, it sounds and feels good so people follow them around. Not just some bozo with a couple of speakers shoved in a corner that every other Tom Dick and Harry Bar has. My questions are asked to find a decent compromise between "The Best" and "Average".

I was asking how to find the bitrate of the CDG disk files (Bin) before I rip em. No sense ripping a file at 320 that's only 160 on the original manufacturers disk. Upconverting is only an option (double the bit rate) if you REALLY need to enhance the low end response and can't do it enough with your mixer live. There are a few that actually work better a little bass heavy.

Experienced Observation: Peoples perception of loudness has a lot to do with distortion. When a club owner complained that my system wasn't loud enough (112 db 50 feet away from the stacks), I turned it down a little and added distortion to the whole mix. Tube preamp off an aux send. He thought it was loud enough then. The ear perceives the low bitrate as distortion leaving me no where to go, and not many options for tweaking unless I want to dedicate a 31 band to the tracks and half-A@@ it.
Dirty high end is annoying, but distortion in the bass creates the illusion of loudness to the average person. Clean bass with a pronounced 40hz thump is perceived as big and powerfull (concert tone, my preference). I've made small clubs sound just like an indoor stadium yet you can still order a drink or talk to your date with a live band blasting away. At one club, they would check to see who was running/supplying sound. If my system was there and the bouncer told them I was running it, they would call their friends.
If I wasn't there, the place was at least half empty because it was always too loud and painful. Ironically I was pretty loud too!!, but clean and with cuts in the most sensitive part of the hearing range. I have a formula that works for me and I want to find content that works with it. Content is King!, the presentation is equally as important.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

I guess I also want to give the singers the closest experience to singing with a real band. A big part of that is psycho-acoustics and content selection. Sure I'll give you the version you want if I have it and you ask for it, but I'll give you the best feeling one with the most background vocal support and musical cues I have if you don't ask. Eminem's lyric "You Better Lose Yourself" is where I will send you if you don't specify.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

Well ya' know... it's just karaoke.

I think you shouldn't settle for 320..... I think you should rip to BIN or WAV+G. With hard drives so cheap why not?

I know I should have better self control, but I am going to make it my life's mission to personally (@$%&#!) slap the (@$%&#!) out of every single person I come across who utters this damning phrase..

Rip at wave+g.... !! I needed a good silly laugh, thanks.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

If you are that caught up in being the best you can be then why is that so silly. I am not the one out raged by bitrate. Find original media and rip to your heart's content.

why not rip at wav+g?
1tb of storage is only about $60. that will hold most libraries.

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

There is a popular show in my area that has a 4 TB enterprise grade HD that has all of his files in wav+g, and frankly I can't hear any appreciable difference from my system which is ripped at 192 (for the most part). He also has QSC speakers, top of the line Shure wireless, and a digital mixer.

In a noisy bar bitrate plays very little importance IMHO.

BIT RATE is a joke. It's just something for inferior KJs to brag about because their skills are lacking so they try to make up for personality with bit rate. Library size used to be what KJs tried to use to try to show they they were a better KJ than the guy down the street. Now they use bit rate. A bad KJ is a bad KJ no matter what bit rate he rips his files at. A good KJ will be successful regardless of bit rate.

Mr Marog.. I didn't realize the pioneers were wave files. I assumed they were 320 mp3+g in a bin based on other rips I did that appeared to have a cutoff at 12khz. My apologies in thinking you were joking...
I did a test re-ripping pi010r tracks 1 and 11 (rock), and sfdg37 (synth).
The most noticeable differences are in the background vocals and drums. The Mp3 is quite a bit mushy and the drums get smeared even at 320. Annoying to me as a drummer. On the SGDG37 track it wasn't bad (synth based) until the background vocals came in.
The wave PI010r wave track also had a lot more room reflections and nuances than the mp3 and was certainly more "alive".
The track production team did a good job that appears to get lost in mp3 encoding. Kind of expected the KV's to be like that.
I looked at the waveforms after listening and the most noticeable thing was the density of the high end on the wave file (as expected).
Ripping waves probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense for most stuff but... I will probably rip stuff like Evanescence where the backgrounds really do matter, or heavy drum dependent rock tracks at both 320 (library) and wav.
I also noticed the kick drums and snare were much more punchy in the wave files. Test singing to the Depeche Mode mp3 was a bit like work (thank god that's over! ) while the wave file was actually...fun! (hmm lets do that again! ) Same with the two princes track.
I had not done karaoke since before Hard disk systems became the norm so I'm dealing with a learning curve and expectations based on the quality of the disk days. Now I see clearly why kj's around here usually don't bring subs and use 10's or 12's as mains.

KK: I had NO intention of advertising or showing off a higher bitrate library as a sales tool... I figured I'd keep it to myself just like the custom subs and cabs that appear to be something ordinary.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

I can hear the difference between 320 and 192... but my patrons can't. Having a library at 320 would be pretty much for my benifit and not theirs.

Songs to me are divided into 2 categories. Ones that are good, and ones that are crap. Lol

I've been saying that for years.

I know DJ's that, with a boom box, could entertain circles around other djs with setups that look and sound like a Pink Floyd concert.

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DJ Don

Turns out my frustration is with the MP3 format itself on a large format system. The biggest losers in lossy compression are the snare, snare overtones, vocals, and sound stage. The sound stage is not an issue, the lack of punch in the snare and clarity in the bkv is.
It makes the live singer appear "un glued" to the track in the case of rock or anywhere the vocalist is a originally part of the musical content and not a constant soloist on top of it. Having done a ton of artists singing over tracks specially mixed (karaoke style) for clubs,
I was mistaken in expecting today's regular karaoke tracks to be similar in quality and content.

One thing I'd like to figure out is how to determine if a track is simply a low bitrate track wrapped in a high bitrate or wave file before I re-rip it. I am finding some original manufacturers disks have a 12-16k cutoff. I am guessing they are either 196k files wrapped in a wave file, low bitrate waves, or intentionally filtered. What I do not know is if some cd's are not wave but mp3 contained in the bin and how to see them...? I can tell you that some brands we don't consider very good are wide open and benefit greatly from some eq tweaking.
I'm batch processing those brands at 320 with soundtools2. I wish it had an rms/peak meter though.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

I can't hear squat.. Too many hours repairing diesel tractors..

That's the beauty of the volume slider

I use Spek for acoustic spectrum analysis. With a bit of understanding about how MP3 compression works, which you seem to have, you can tell if a file has been upscaled to fake a higher bitrate.

Here's a link that explains the analysis and has a link to download Spek:

https://www.maketecheasier.com/check-tr ... dio-files/

I use spec too. Nifty and useful little program.
Unfortunately you have to rip the file at wave from the cd first. I was hoping something would do a raw rip of the files on the CD. I'm running through samples of each brand now.

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Purple Frog Karaoke Cuz we all feel odd and love to "croak"

In all honesty, karaoke format is switching the HD karaoke tracks so why bother going through all the hustle n' bustle with bit rates when you can buy the complete set of Sunfly HD karaoke tracks for approx $0.50 cents / track.

Get with the program guys. HD is here for a while.

On another note, "it's all about Hi-Fidelity"