Karaoke Forums

OOPs Looks like there is a CompuHost Thread in Technical Forum...I still would like to have more dialog than what is posted there to make a decision.


Well I read a few posts here regarding CompuHost and thought I would give the demo a try. Boy was I impressed with how many features this software has and how intuitive all the features are to work with. I loaded 13565 songs in the database from my hard drive in like 3 minutes (I was shocked at how fast the load and database rebuild went)

Working with the rotation and loading songs is a breeze. I like how you can load as many songs for each singer as you want and it retains all the info including the key change in history after the show. The entire rotation management function of this software is well thought out and superior to anything that I have experienced on the market so far.

The only drawback I can see is the USB Dongle that must be inserted in order to play songs past the 120 second mark. I could see this as a big problem if you lost the key and had a show before you could get a replacement. When you purchase the program do you have to wait for them to mail you the dongle? If so how long does that take?

The display and on screen features are versatile and can add a real professional polish to a show.

I have yet to be able to hook it up to a sound system to see how it sounds in relation to the MTU software I have on my other systems. I have not compared MP3G to KMA for quite some time so I can't remember the difference.


I'm looking into trying this program in one of my shows to see how it works out. I would welcome any input from folks who have this software and love it and those who have tried it but decided not to purchase. I would like to know the pro's and cons before investiing $179

Please no software bashing  Honest and sincere posts please!

I'm really intrigued by this software and would like to make a quality decision by comparing my thoughts with the thoughts of others.

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FlipSide Karaoke
Scott

I own Compuhost and think it's the best karaoke software around based on how feature rich the program is.  I love it!

...but keep this in mind... the quality of sound IS NOT determined by the karaoke software, but rather your sound card / sound card driver... so sound quality will be identical compared to other programs.  I think you should base your decision on which software to purchase by your needs... However, for me, the features and usability of Compuhost are excellent!

good luck!

Flipper,

The dongle is mailed in the same hard envelope as the software, along with the software CD and the instruction booklet. It is a great software program, no doubt.

What I've also learned from operating it is using the brand specific song request and the singer history I now use for my faves listing upon start up. Very handy!

EG; For ONLY the Sound Choice listings...put the title,+ SC for only the sound choice of that song to come up. I have a LOOONG list of Favorite dance songs that are under the "Dance" singer history, just put in "Dance"/history/select all...they're all loaded ready to go. I also have a favorite song list of karaoke w/vocals I use as an added enticement for singers...its listed under the karaoke w/vocals singer history. I plan on starting to use the recorder on the Compuhost to record my better singers for playback on this list also. The options are endless it seems.

Their staff really help you when and if you get in a fix also. They really do strive to fix and maintain/please their clientel. Since I've bought it, a revision has come out that really helped me in reducing the "LOAD" on my PC. The revisions are free to prior purchasers. If you have any problems, contact them and they will get back to you quickly. With their consistant and constant revisioning, I'm sure the future is bright for them to be the leaders in this market.

                                                                                bigjim56

I'm only going to address the usb part - if you have a mini-tower or even a shuttle, you can hook the usb up to the dongle inside the case, and never have to worry about it!

That's a good for tower or shuttle PC users as it would definately solve the problem...good idea Matt.

I'm using a laptop so if I use this software I will use a USB adapter and run a cable from my KJ/DJ case to the USB port that way the Dongle stays there all the time. Also have 2 show laptops and will install the software on both and have one as backup. That way if one goes down I plug the dongle into #2 and I'm good to go.


BigJim - I find their search feature to be an excellent tool. I can type "elto sc"
and it will bring all the songs with elton john and Sound Choice up. That saves alot of time looking through all the different brands that I have Elton songs in.

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FlipSide Karaoke
Scott

I have been using compuhost and in general I really like it.

Only problem I have noticed on occasion is sometimes the filenames are not added to the database if the exact format is not exactly right. An extra "-" or a missed "-" or space can make a song be ignored in the database import, or worse appear and then not be "readable" by the software.

Sure the fix is just to rename the song/cdg files but it is a minor annoyance.

I dislike the dongle, but hey, it is how they make sure that copies are legal. It is even worse with my laptop as the dongle will sometimes not be recognized in one of my usb slots (but it works in the others).

As for sound quality I did have a problem with my sound card interacting with compuhost such that a slight delay occured between the lyrics on screen and the music in longer songs (about 1/2 a second after a 4 min song) that was annoying and it goes away when I dont use the sound card. (It was even worse before I did a update on my sound card drivers. Fortunately my internal sound card sounds very good, and I cant detect any limitations of it, so now I am just using my internal laptop soundcard. While many of the internal soundcards are suboptimal, there is no reason that they all have to be. Other softare that I tested for karaoke did not have the delays.

The features I do like are the rotation, and keeping track of histories.

I also like the easy  way to search for songs with a minimal few letters of a song/artist.

Dr Fred - Thank you for your thoughts.

Hey I ran across a setting in the manual for offsetting the sync when this type of thing happens. Look in your manual it is in there.

I had no problems with my sound card and sync issues. But they conver it quite extensively. Also make sure you have the latest verision of the software as I see fixes are regular and free.

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FlipSide Karaoke
Scott