Karaoke Forums

Not sure what you are saying here as far as simplicity? My numbers in the books are identical to what I ran when I was all disc based. Only difference is now, not only can I look up a song by number, I can also look up songs by song title or artist or a combo of both to get an exact match. Type in number, add to playlist push play - done.

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And a computer doesn't HAVE to use compressed files. WAV+G options are used by several software. And with hard drive space as cheap as it is today, if someone chose that option, they would still have more than plenty of room on a 1 or 2 TB drive. Although going through a pro quality sound card & a 320 (or equivalent) rip, you won't notice a difference between an original disc or a good quality rip.

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I have a great deal of respect for all of you hosts that have the computer skills to make a PC work. For the rest of us hosts that were not brought up with computers, making them work is a daunting task. There must be a market for the U-best 368-E, or why even make it? It must fill some kind of need and I don't think it would be for the casual home user. Have a blessed day.

As with most things you can buy, the cheaper ones are deigned to sell to the less sophisticated, and never give refunds.

I think they call that "Found Money".

At 800.00 to 900.00 a unit it's not cheap. From what I've read the simple laptop used for karaoke purposes is much less expensive. The negative thing about the jukebox from what I have seen is the amount of work it takes to fill one, and then backing it up properly so all the effort is not wasted. That is why the 368-E is a step up you can use a computer keyboard and format back up hard drives without having to have the manufacturer do it for a fee. Have a blessed day.

I don't have any hard confirmation on this, but I suspect the u-best and acesonic machines are the same... The program for loading songs on the acesonic KOD1000 is title "U-best" something or other...

A couple things that I'd like to point out:

I'm not an expert, and I could be wrong somewhere here:

Taking music from a SCDG does not degrade it further. An SCDG is much like a (truly) zipped file. The files are stacked on top of each other as one big file. Somewhere at the beginning are the addresses of the individual files and other relevant information. A program that unzips a zipped file simple reads the addresses and relevant information and splits up the file/s at those addresses. Each SCDG has a file (cmv00001.dat - or something like that) which contains the addresses. They use multiple cmv files because an SCDG can be 8 gigs on a dual layer DVD. The addresses are listed in bytes - and 8 gigs is 8 billion bytes. A programmer would have to use many 64 bit variables to accommodate numbers that high. Splitting the files up into smaller .dat files enables the programmer to use 32 bit variables.

Next...

CAVS systems were ahead of their time when they came out. The 203-G USB is still a great product, but antiquated compared to the search features a computer allows. When they first came out, users were pointed to a console program named "rename2" to get their files saved as sequential numbers from 00001 to whatever. That program was terrible and I made a lot of mistakes. They fixed that with the MCG manager.

CAVS has alleged that they are the victim of a smear campaign by a karaoke music manufacturer that resisted format shifting and is seeking damages for what they consider to be inaccurate and libelous statements made by that manufacturer. There's still a lot of people that won't even consider CAVS because their name is still synonymous with piracy in the minds of a lot of people, possibly the result of that alleged smear campaign. Truth is, CAVS has some of the best, if not the best software out there right now. They have been and still are on the forefront of karaoke innovations.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

I bought a JB99 in 1999-2000, and I loved it once I got all my songs loaded. It came with 200 preloaded songs and the rest was up to me. It really is the easiest way to do a karaoke show, because it puts all of the work on the singers shoulders to find the songs and the song numbers. They look in a book, find the number, write it on a slip, and hand it to you. You punch in a 1 to 5 digit code and the songs begins. The downfall was that there was no way to remove silence, and the refresh rate between pages of lyrics had an annoying lag, so on some songs you had to know the start of the next line because it wasn't on the screen yet.

For someone that is not computer savvy or a good typist, the JB99 and JB199 would at least remove the burden of lugging around cd's. I still have mine, but I never loaded any more new songs into it once I went with a laptop around 2007. Most of my favorite songs and versions are loaded on it so it still has value to me.

I never had (or realized) this problem with the 203-G.

I'd also like to add that the 203-G is a GREAT backup system. Not only will it function when your computer doesn't, it also enables you to play customer disks. You could say it kills 2 birds with one stone.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

To what case are you referring? I'm aware, of course, of an ongoing suit, but not one in which CAVS was granted damages.

I will not confirm nor deny which manufacturer that I was referring to. However, because I may not have done adequate research and am not willing to, I have edited that statement to err on the side of caution.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

I prefer the PC version because I can file away the slips given me when I was taking slips, because my software told me who was singing what. You can't do this with a jukebox karaoke player that Lone Ranger is referring to.

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

Not only rare, but if I'm correct, old too. U-Best was the label that later became Top Hits- quite awhile ago. If it's the same label, they probably had it made for them, as Performers' Choice disc players were made for SC.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

My father is 87 years old. He emails, uses facebook, made his own geneology website, setup his own wireless network in his house, the list goes on. He certainly wasn't brought up with computers. He just has a passion for technology and a willingness to learn new things. I think that it's one of the reasons he is still so sharp at 87.

My Grandpa bought his first ever computer when he turned 78. He is almost 90 now - another one definitely NOT raised on technology. Within a few weeks he was emailing, buying music, creating greeting cards, video editing, music editing, photo - processing, morphing, editing, etc.... It's just a matter of how much you want to learn.
Computer kj'ing is not a daunting task in any means. And setting it up is usually just a matter of running the softwares exe file to load on the computer. The one time rip of the discs is the most time consuming, but once that is done - it's done.

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Actually Joe from what I managed to find out the original machine for U-Best was the 168 with room for about 9,000 songs, then came the 268 with up to 2 TB of storage and can hold 50,000 tracks. The new 368 has a USB port and can be hooked up to a key board, you are able to format your own hard drives now without having to send the machine back to the factory for adjustments. It also has a 2TB capacity. Have a blessed day.

AND the 368 costs $800. Check the U-Best reviews on Amazon. Pretty crappy:

• "To start, the instructions that came with this player are simply awful."
• "CPU fan noise is loud and (unit is) buggy"
• "While in the process of re-recording my lost songs, the unit died."
• "But it's a poor design machine giving it's actually a PC."
• "After over $100 charge to ship my player from MN to CA for warranteed work, the unit died again after a month."
• "so many hours of my life I won't get back."

I would RUN from one of these Chinese "all in one" magic boxes. You could do a LOT more with $800 than one of these.

They remind me of the automatic bread-making machines from a few decades ago. If you want to make bread, then learn how to make bread.
If you want Karaoke music on a computer, then learn to use a computer.

Bazza have you ever owned one of these machines, have you even seen one being operated by someone that knows what they are doing? You are basing everything on a review that is written by a customer that wasn't happy with the product, and probably didn't even to bother to read the manual before trying to operate it. The host using the machine I saw was not having any problem with it. He said it was his second machine he originally bought a 168 and then moved up to a 268. Mrmarog used a JB99, a similar machine 1999-2000 until he went computer in 2007, he said he loved it. The machine itself might be worth an investment if I were going to stay at hosting for another couple of years. Since I have decided to quit the business after Oct 31st of this year, it wouldn't make much sense for a few months, considering the great amount of work that goes into loading one of these machines. Have a blessed day.

Nope, I haven't used one. I also havent used ANY of the hundreds of "karaoke machines" that are sold on Amazon. I don't have to use them to know that they are inferior to the real thing.



Reviews are usually pretty telling. Especially when they are all overwhelmingly negative. The first quote was "To start, the instructions that came with this player are simply awful". Maybe they were in Chinese?



Do you know what these boxes are? PC's. It's a computer in a case with a proprietary interface...that's all.

WHY would you buy a computer that you can ONLY use in one, very narrow way? With a real PC if you don't like your hosting software, you can delete it and get something else. When new features are released you can easily update. You can troubleshoot problems when they occur instead of having to ship your magic box back to the manufacturer and pay $100. You can add other software to enhance you show. You can back things up, run a rotation, play videos, play filler music, the list goes on. NONE of these things can you do with the magic black box.

What makes sense is to do it the right way and use a computer and one of the dozen of hosting programs that are purpose built for professional working KJ's. These "karaoke for dummies" boxes are expensive toys. Toys for people afraid of technology or unwilling to learn. For $800 you could get a fine used laptop with any of the hosting programs talked about around here and be light years ahead of this difficult to load black box, which, if you were to take the cover off...is simply a dumbed down PC with a big price tag.

Don't worry I didn't say I am going to buy one, I said if I were staying in the business I would look at one with an open mind. It would seem the only host on here with any knowledge of this type of machine is mrmarog. He seems to feel that it is a way to do karaoke since he used a type of this machine for what 8 years, he says it still works, even though he has gone to a PC. As I remember many hosts have posted that their PC's have gone down also. Have a blessed day Bazza.