Karaoke Forums

Gayle, Morgan & ExWeed have both provided excellent info for your computer MP3+G playing needs. I use the WinAmp plugin Morgan linked to and it's awesome.

If you're looking for a home "P.A.," you shouldn't really need one. If you're able to plug your computer into your home stereo (line-in), that will suit your needs for music. For the microphone, you should be able to plug one into your computer with a 1/4" phono jack on the end. It will feed from the computer to the stereo; you'd control the mic volume using the Windows Master Volume interface. If you have a 1/2" microphone input on your stereo you can plug it in there, too. In either case, be careful not to blow your speakers!

actually kayleigh gotta disagree, the home theatre system isnt designed for live vocals and likely to be damaged...that is the first thing I learned here...but there are some very reasonable alternatives (well if you live in US) over here the most reasonable is bout $1200 new.

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

No problem... I'm not in total favor of using a home stereo system for vocals. Home stereo speakers are VERY likely to be damaged by most singers, thus the disclaimer in my post. Maybe I should have made it stronger? Heck, I'd blow out most home speakers.

Pink, I have a friend who does karaoke in her living room for parties. I'll ask her what she does for vocal sound and hopefully give you a suggestion that won't blow your speakers.

kayleigh :  Thanks,, yes ask your friend what she uses.  I havent purchased the sound system yet. Right now Im working on getting the laptop to play the CDG.

The laptops being stubborn with it wireless air card,, grrrrrrrrr...

As the resident advisor (self appointed ) on all things cheap and karaoke I certainly agree that you shouldn't run live sound through your home theater speakers.  However, home stereo speakers from thirty years ago might do the trick.  The sound was not as exacting as modern speakers and they won't take the wattage of most modern amps, but there was more slop in the product and they will take a little more abuse from live input.  For ten or fifteen buck you should be able to yard sale something that will do the job, so if you don't like the sound you're not out much.  Just a suggestion.  I had a pair of Radio Shack Mach-1s that I used for monitors when I first started.  They worked just fine.

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Okay, who took my pants?

Them Mach 1's were a pretty decent sounding speaker in their day!  I had a set too  :D

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Hi Everyone:  Here's where I have progressed to.   I downloaded the CDG plug-in for winamp.  I went to the store and purchased a karaoke CDG, downloaded the songs into MY Music.  Winamp is playing the song, but I don't see the words to the song yet.  It could either be I don't have Winamp configured correctly or something else.  I'm not sure if I downloaded the plug-in to the correct location.  I put it in two places after two downloads.
1. In winamps plug-in file
2. In My Music in My Documents.  I read on the Winamp site to put it in the music file, well I didn't know which music file.  

As you can tell, I am not real great with computers so I need instructions told in a very basic way, please !!  :)

I appreciate any help with this
Thank You,
Gayle

In you situation the first thing I would do is to make sure that I actually had a CDG file along with the MP3 and that they have the same name and are in the same directory.  Check the file size which should be about 2Mb more or less depending on the length of the song.

If you're not sure that you have the plug-in configured correctly, download on of the stand along player demos and try that.  If that plays you have narrowed it down to your winamp configuration.  From there it will be easier to advise you.

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Okay, who took my pants?

exweedfarmer: Can you give me a link to a stand alone player?

Thanks
Gayle

there are two winamp plugins...
one for the mp3+g and the other for playing on the cd drive.

AND in both instances, you must have a drive that can read the subcode.

What burner is on your pc?

to rip a cdg disc pink you will need something like audiograbber and you will have to select cdg rip and select how you want it ripped ie either archive, bin etc. I prefer archive which is a zip file containing both the cdg and mp3 components

_________________
"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

For diagnostic purposes download KaraokeBuddy at www.freewebs.com/sacksonuts it is not a freeware player but it is a stand alone and will play the first minute of the songs which is all you need for testing.  I only suggest KaraokeBuddy only because it's small and my software so I can look up what the error message mean if you get one.

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Okay, who took my pants?

Exweedfarmer:  I clicked on this link: www.freewebs.com/sacksonuts

Read some of the things on that site.  It was giving warnings about not to download that file (I think). Well, I trust  your opinion and went ahead and clicked on the link and this big warning came up(like one I never seen in my life) so I didnt open the file because of this HUGE warning.  Can you reassure me that this is ok to do?

Thanks
Gayle

Hi Knightshow:  This computer is homemade I have no clue what kind of CD burner it has.  I use Nero Burning to burn the cd's though.  How can I check to see what it is? I use windows 2000 professional on this desktop computer.  My laptop, which is the one I really want to use for the karaoke, is not getting online right now and is on an air card.  I have to reload the driver disk from bellsouth.  I am trying to experiment right now, learning what I can before I purchase any equipment for karaoke.  To me, it makes more since to use your computer and maybe use a flash drive to load music on.  I may not know what Im talking about with loading music on a flash drive or even if it would work.

Thanks for your help,
Gayle

in weedy's absence I can guarantee his software to be safe from anything malicious, I have it, in fact I was lucky enough to test it not that weedy thinks that, I am a bit of a technophob...anyway its probably your anti virus telling you you have downloaded a potentially dangerous executable file. All exe files are potentially harmful if you dont know their source of origin. But weedy is the author of the software and he is anything but malicious

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

Hi MorganLeFey:  I went ahead and downloaded that file(thanks for the reassurance) opened it, went to my C:drive, it didnt see any music there.

I went to this site-TriceraSoft-Downloaded the trial CDG ripper which gives you a 60 second test.  It showed that my cd rom is a (Lite-on LTR-16102B-OS08-cd rom) I inserted the CDG karaoke disc into the cd driver.  It ripped it to a MP3 file.  I played it in the winamp and the sound was great, but again no words on the screen.  I still dont have the winamp Plug-in working yet.  

My question is,, the Karaoke Buddy, what should it have done? Should it have played the music with the words showing?  It never seen the 60 second recording I made either...  :(

thanks for your help !!!!!!!!
Gayle

Don't worry about the warning message, that's just my warped mind at work.  I wrote that thing for Morgan and by the time we got near done it was so big I desided to put it out as shareware.  The long and the short of it is that if you have a valid CDG (graphics) file along with the MP3 it should play.  If the CDG file isn't there it will give you an error message that says "No CDG file found" strangely enough.  Then we know the problem is with your ripper or CD drive.

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Okay, who took my pants?

I am sooooo bruddy lucky to have had the prog written for me the one he wrote for me he called snog, cos that is a favourite expression of mine
but snog grew into karaokebuddy...it will always be snog to me

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

Morgan:  Ive learned alot on here about CDG--Mp3+g.  Tried alot of differents things but still not able to get things going. My next try will be the KaraFun website.  

Lets see what happens there.

the Lite-On brands SHOULD work with this.

Audiograbber is a free download. Once you install it, in order to do the conversion to compressed format (most folks use .mp3 format for compressed), you need to have a compressor in the audiograbber folder. It doesn't come with one!

Now, PERSONALLY, I use LAME (do a google search for "LAME encoder").

But you can rip the tracks to a .bin format, and play it with www.karaokebuilder.com 's player (free download). It will play both .cdg and .bin formats! If you rip to .bin, you can play that file, and if the window appears with graphics, then your drive is good for it!

VERY simple way of knowing if you have a good rip or not!