Karaoke Forums

So, I’m thinking that the next stage of my home Karaoke evolution is to improve user-friendliness for song selection.  So this means putting my CDGs on PC (either as uncompressed wav or high bit rate mp3) and setting up some type of jukebox/song list type thing.  I know there is software I’ll need to buy or download to be able to get the CDGs to PC and for playing them back with the PC.  I’m planning to use a laptop (which I haven’t bought yet), which I’ll bring down to the basement for Karaoke and connect to my audio system and front projector.

I have a couple questions regarding Karaoke video and audio from the PC.

Video for graphics:
What connection do folks use from their PC to TV/monitor?  I’ve tried S-video from PC to my projector, and it didn’t look that great.  I also tried VGA, and it looked good, as expected.  Problem is that I don’t have VGA run to my projector (just HDMI, component, and composite) and don’t want a cable hanging down from my ceiling-mounted projector.  I think I have a way to make a long run of VGA from the projector to a convenient spot for the PC.

When using a PC, do the graphics look the same as through a CDG player?

Audio:
What audio connection do folks use?  I plan to use SPDIF or USB to send digital audio to my home theater receiver, letting the receiver’s DAC do the digital to analog conversion (this should have vastly superior sound to the PC’s dac and analog/headphone out).  I assume that mp3 and wav audio can be sent in a PCM bitstream to an outboard DAC.  

Thanks for any input.

I use vga to a 17" lcd monitor.  S-Video is fine for just the low-res Karaoke graphics (yes they look exactly the same as the discs).  I would go with VGA if you want to display anything else from the laptop through the projector.  Check out Monoprice.com for some inexpensive long VGA cables.

For the Audio, I run spdif from an external sound card to my mixing board so yes that should work.  You definitely don't want to use the headphone out.  If your receiver has a usb in, I would just go with that.  If not you will probably need an external sound card to get spdif.  I've never seen a laptop with it onboard.

s-video works just fine for videos. I pipe movies over to the tv from the pc... never an issue!

The laptop I'm considering has an 1/8" SPDIF jack, so I'm assuming I could send digital audio to an outboard DAC (for example, to a digital input on my receiver).  For home audio, digital coax is run over a 75 Ohm coax cable with RCA connectors, so I'm thinking I would need a 1/8" to RCA adapter that maintains 75 Ohms, or buy a coax cable that has 1/8" on one end and RCA on the other.

I don't know much about audio on PCs, but I'm hoping I could configure the sound card to send mp3 audio as PCM bitstream via the SPDIF out.

I would for sure get an external audio card (USB). laptop sound cards are not very good. They usually have poor filtering, and pick up hard drive noise.

As far as video, use the S-video port, or get a s-video to composite video cable. Your video image is never going to be great with CD+G, because the graphics files are not "high resolution" they are very small files embedded in the free tracks on the CD, and the total space is like 32Kbits. They were supposed to be played on a regular TV with like 240 lines of resolution. When you project this on to a big screen it's going to look like the old CGA video of the first color IBM computers...not very good...but that's the best your going to get.

Excellent advice.  There are actually 216 lines of resolution and 204  that are used but that's being about as knit picky as one can get.  I would suggest not getting a laptop at all.  Since this is going to just sit in your home get an old desktop and hide the box somewhere.  The parts are cheaper to replace and it's more easily serviced and configured.

_________________
Okay, who took my pants?

Thanks for the input.

My video concern is not CDG graphics.  I'm more concerned with how the song selection software looks.  When I tried my work laptop, VGA was vastly superior to S-video for software.  I'll likely just run a long VGA cable, testing it first before I run it.  I believe some video cards can be configured to output component video through VGA, so I'll look into that too.  With the proper VGA to 3 RCA cable, this would allow me to try component video before I run a VGA cable.  Better yet would be a video card with HDMI, but that is only found on the higher-end laptops.

I should not need an external sound card, as my home theater receiver has USB and digital (SPDIF) inputs.  I'll use the receiver for D to A conversion; it has a nice DAC chip set.

Any new PC I buy will be our new home PC.  We're using an 8 year old Pentium 3 running Windows 98, so it's time to upgrade.  A laptop gives me the option to take it to the basment for Karaoke.

So you are trying to select the songs from the big screen TV? Your explaination is not very clear. I'm not sure why you would want to project the song selection software on to the TV screen...most of us run extended desktop and hide the song selections on the computer - only show the CD+G graphics on the TV.

I'm not sure how you will by pass the laptop sound card if your going to run MP3+G...very confusing...?????

I have some more to add after re-reading your original post.

If you intend to project the computer software image on to a big screen, the S-video port is not a good choice. Essentially you are taking a digital image and making it analog. The resolution is not good enough to get a clear image, particularly if the text size is small to begin with.

If you intend to run the music with the graphics from the original CD+G, most of us use MP3+G. You have to keep the files CD and Graphics together, in order to play them back. I don't know if you can take a BIN file from the CD+G disk and play it back on the computer. This also takes a ton of hard drive space, as each disk is 750MB, so, 10 disks would be 7.5 gig and so on. MP3+G is one tenth the size...that's why most of us KJ's use that as the standard. Also there are a number of software programs specifically for running MP3+G karaoke.

Are you aware of this?

You can't run a WAV file and connect it back to the graphics...at least I don't know of a way to do this.

My vision for this is to rip my CDGs to a laptop and be able to display the graphics and song selection software at the highest res possible.  I'd like for folks to be able to select songs themselves, so I want the song selection software to be as clear as possible on my projector.  So far, I'm thinking that VGA is the way to go.

Regarding audio, I'm not a PC audio expert, but I know that you can send PC audio digitally to an external digital to analog converter for better sound.  In this case you are not using the DAC in the soundcard in favor of a higher quality external DAC.  In my case, I would be using the DAC in my home theater receiver.

I have used s-vid2RCA adapters to connect to high definition televisions, big screen TV's, media projectors, small tv's, big tv's, old tv's, new tv's, LCD and flat screens with no video problems.  Karaoke graphics are simple and cheesey whether they are on a VGA monitor or your choice of TV.  You may try changing the resolution of your secondary graphics screen on the PC side of it to see if it makes a difference to you.  I usually run secondary monitor (TV) at 800X600 (I think off the top of my head- I will check at work tonight).  Whatever particular software you are using to play the karaoke may need it's settings adjusted (if it has that capability) as well as the "song selection software" you mentioned.  you should be able to find a happy medium between the two that works for you.  

As far as audio goes- if you are building a permanent setup (not breaking it down each time) then you may find that using the 1/8" audio jack on the PC sound card suffices for your needs.  Just make sure to buy higher end connectors and cabling.  If you are using a laptop that may get torn down and used for other uses then you might wanna look into the many products available for external sound uses.  These range from simple external  USB devices up to higher end internal and external boxes with your choice of inputs/outputs for singing or recording.  It really depends on your budget and your needs.  Check out audio stuff from Creative or go to a place like musician's friend and they will have many choices of sound devices for your PC.

Someone mentioned they didn't know of any software that will link a WAV file back to it's graphics pair.  Club DJ Pro 2.1 will play wav+g and more.  It plays MP3+G, WMA+G, OGG+G, WAV+G, MP4+G, AAC+G, M4A+G, and also supports zipped karaoke formats!   They have a new Version 3 coming out soon.  Check their program out, and other media software, at http://www.clubdjpro.com

good luck...

tig

I'm new to all this, so when I say "song selection software", I think I mean hosting software - basically the program that lets you scroll through the songs by artist and select a song for playback.  I have more research to do for the software you use to rip CD+Gs to mp3+G, and the software you use to organize and play songs.

Yeah, the lyric graphics should look OK no matter what connection I use.  As I mentioned earlier, I'm more concerned about the hosting software looking as good as possible on my projector so that folks can easily read the artists and songs displayed on the projection screen, rather than looking at the laptop screen or my hard copy song lists.

When you select a song, do the lyric graphics automatically come up and fill the screen, then when the song is over, does the hosting software come back up?

For the audio, I'm going to research the particular laptop I'm considering.  My hope is to be able to use its 1/8" SPDIF or even USB to connect directly to my receiver, with no other audio devices in the chain.  As long as the laptop's audio can be output digitally in a format my receiver can decode, I won't need an external device.

This is an odd way to do this in my opinion. I think you need to do more research on software, ripping CD+G's, Mp3+G, laptop sound, etc.

I have been running DJ and Karaoke from computer for 5 years, and I still don't understand why you would want to have the song selection on your TV screen. You can cetainly do this, and you can run VGA output to your TV if it has a VGA input, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why you would want to do this. If you have a laptop or computer with S-Video out, then you will have software that allows you to extend the desktop to have 2 monitors. One is your computer screen, and the other is the TV. You place the Karaoke lyrics onto the extended desktop TV screen which does not show on your computer. Then your friends and family can be selecting the next song from the computer screen while someone else is singing. This is the normal, most efficient way to do this. All karaoke hosting software is set up to do this in this way. If you run it the way you propose, the system is tied up during each song. You will be spending more time looking up songs between singers, than you will actually be singing.

I still suggest you get a good quality USB sound card for the audio as well.

Dennis, I get your point and it should certainly eliminate the need for me to run VGA, since the Karaoke lyrics should look OK run through S-video (actually S-video converted to composite, since I don't have S-video run to the projector).

I just thought it would be cool to have song lists displayed on the projector so folks could select songs from the couch using the laptop's remote or some other type of wireless pointing device.

Currently, I have pauses between songs because all my songs are on disc.  Our home Karaoke is pretty casual, with breaks as we decide who's up next, getting beverages, etc.  So, efficiency is not my primary concern.  Maybe that will change as my Karaoke experience evolves.

And yes, I do definitely need to do more research on software.  Being new to this and having no experience with the software and "how things work" might be why my intentions seem confusing to you.

you can always use snapstream's firefly remote and beyond media software to look up your songs on the big screen.  simply assign winamp, with the karaoke plugins, as the media player to open mp3+g files (even zipped) and you can use the remote to click through your music folders.  select the karaoke song you want and click play on the remote.  easy as that.  no mouse.  no keyboard.  one remote control to access songs.  
 you can find out more about their remote controls and different software to access your PC/TV etc  http://www.snapstream.com then it is just a matter of the system you use to organize your songs for easiest searching and selection.  
 You could probably also make many of the other PC remote controls and software work for what you need.  ATI makes a couple of different remotes and software to go along with their all in wonder video cards.  


tig

Adam,

I hope I didn't come off as too much of a jerk.  :D

It might be cool to do that if you could get the songlist to look decent on the big screen. problem is most software programs have an interface with all sorts of other things, not just the song list. If you could have just a songlist on the screen with big characters, that you could scroll through and pick the song and it would pop-up, that might work. Not sure that is possible. I have built some touch screen juke boxes that work like that. There is a juke software that also plays MP3+G karaoke using WinAmp, I see if I can find it in my stuff.

Otherwise, I'm still not sure if you run a hosting program that it will work the way you envision. As far as time between singers, in my experience, it takes some time for people to find a song they want to sing. If your library of songs is small, it might be okay and not take too long, but if or when you expand your library, there will be long pauses while people look through the songlist.

One of the real benefits of using a computer is speed. You can have numbers of songs cued up in the system. Once a singer completes, the next song is there ready for you. If you want to screw around you can pause the system.

Tig, thanks for the info.  The HP laptop I’m looking at has a mini remote that supposedly allows you to scroll and select.  I’ll plan to give that a shot first.

Dennis, no harm done.  Being new to all this, I still have a lot to learn and research, so I appreciate the input of experienced folks.