Karaoke Forums

Hello all. I am a newbie & have been running Karaoke Kanta software which has run well until lately when songs in the que slip out mysteriously to be replaced by incorrect songs.

I am thinking of purchasing MTU Hoster Lite, but have become dependent on the ability to change the tempo of certain songs as well as the key & apparently Hoster does not have a tempo change feature. I also understand the ability to download guests CDG's is not available on lite. How then, does one go about getting their own CDG's into the program? I purchased Tricerasoft's CDG Ripper some time back and that is how I get my CDG's into Karaoke Kanta. Will it work the same way with Hoster Lite?

I am not a full time KJ I just do entertainment shows at various entertainment events. I can't seem to justify the purchase price of the full MTU Hoster.

Would you recommend a hosting program other than MTU?

I use JustKaraoke from tricerasoft.  It has all the bells and whistles that Hoster lite has plus a rotation capabitlity.   If you like tricerasoft's ripper then maybe you'll like JustKaraoke. It costs less than Hoster lite and you don't have to change format. I use an outside player for customer's discs.  I also, if they are regulars, will look into getting the songs legally by downloading from tricerasoft or purchasing the disc they have- provided the disc is available.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Thanks Danny. Just Karaoke was one of the programs I was looking at. Maybe I'll take another look.

winamp is free, and has the full ability to do key changing / tempo adjustment with pacemaker.

ESPECIALLY for home use, I recommend that!

Thanks Knight.

Do you know if you can make playlists that can be set to run automatically with Winamp?

You definitely can create them, then save them and play them either automatically or one at a time.

for screen displays, I often kept a separate folder on my desktop of announcements, and would highlight those and play them while I was setting up the show...

never did do the playlist thing... even with standard mp3s... just never took the time to try!

You might want to try this FREE software:

http://www.karafun.com/

This software reads all format, uses the Winamp interface but most important, it uses the Bass sound engine, no other software will give you this sound quality!  I personally like the look of Hoster but my problem is the kma file and the poor sound quality, man, this software uses the worst sound engine I've ever heard, you can't even get a good sound out of a wave (bin) file!

What's a sound engine?

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Okay, who took my pants?

a 350, but I don't think Chevy makes them anymore.... .....woooh! woooh!

Good question!  I'm no programmer and I'm afraid I can't explain properly, but what I know, is that a company like MTU has the option of using their own sound engine which was created by their own programmer or buy one from an outside source like Bass.  Have you ever wonder why each audio software out there have a different sound??? Why Media Player plays better than Winamp or why Karawin or Karafun plays better than an MTU sofware? It's all related to the sound engine.

You might want to test for yourself, download the FREE Xmplay player from Bass and play a cd or a wave file and compare with any other software installed on your machine, you'll be amazed how rich and smooth the sound is, that's what I mean!  
http://www.un4seen.com/

For many, sound is not important, it's only karaoke files that are played on pa's and no one will ever noticed the difference, but my sensitive ears can

Now wait a minute.....Canadians are a bit different.....I've seen yous on South Park........

99% of software players use standard Windows MP3 decoder and audio interface. Winamp has its own MP3 decoding (at least it used to have, I am not sure about the latest version), so it may influence the quality. If you play uncompressed audio the quality depends on your soundcard, unless you do some audio processing (EQ, etc).

I recently purchased an external sound card by Turtle Beach which seems to make a great difference on my laptop. It just plugs into a USB port.

Sure they do but you have to buy them in crate format - not that it has ANYTHING to do with this thread  :whistle:

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

True, most players use a commercial encoder but the best software will let you use the LAME encoder.  An uncompressed file (wave) will not play the same on all players, that really depends on the sound engine used on the player.  I'm using an EMU-1212m on my desktop and I assure you that not one player plays the same! WMP has a nice sound, better than itunes but honestly, nothing comes close to a software that uses the Bass engine.  The worst players I've heard so far are Winamp and the MTU software, but again, is it so important for what they are design for??? These software will not have a place in a studio setup but for karaoke purposes, they're excellent.

Uncompressed audio is always played the same. It is MP3 decoder (LAME is an encoder) that may make a difference. It converts MP3 to uncompressed samples, which are played using standard system audio output (Bass uses DirectX, which is the same Windows API uses). There can be no magic tricks, as all soundcards require stream of samples to be played.

The difference may result from applying DSP or some other sort of processing (like resampling quality for non-standard sampling frequencies).

Hmmm, now that's strange? Why do I get a different sound on each player when using the same wave file??? If I import a track from a cd into wave on my hard drive and play the same file on different players, I do get a different sound? And if I use different extracting software, I'll again get a diffrent sound??? Let's say I import in my hard drive using wavelab and than use Microstudio, the two files will not sound the same but shouldn't they be identical???

CD-reading software may use different algorithms to fix errors, and this may result in different files.

Uncompressed WAV file should sound the same regardless of the player, unless the player uses DSP (ie. it may have equalizer in the audio stream, which even if not working may change the quality of the sound). WAV files can still be compressed, but as it is lossless compression then decompressing algorithm should not change the sound.

Now I knew I wasn't dreaming!  I found something interesting here:

http://www.appscout.com/2007/06/mxplay_ ... ebox_1.php