Karaoke Forums

look, basically, you get what you pay for.

Nobody's saying that the cheap brands, $7.99 discs are going to solve the karaoke problems. If you balk at buying a song on a $28.00 disc (and yes, now that SC has dropped their prices again, it's becoming a moot point), and instead buy a cheaper brand, chances are you'll not be too happy with it IN COMPARISON with the other disc.

I've always looked at the cost per song on a disc as well. Basically, if you're not paying $1.50 per song, don't complain if it's a crappy disc or manufacturer!

Has anyone got an opinion on Karaoke Bay. SOld at k-mart and best buy, but they seem to have rather good sounds & lyrics, at a good price....

I've only used one, and it wasnt half bad

_________________
______________________________________
I'm Not Dead yet...... But every day Im getting Closer !

I think Cantalopera were part of the old Sunfly range (they go back a bit).

I have a couple I bought for home. The are the disco Vol 1 & 2. Sound very good - surprisingly. So I bought a country disc for the club to try out, it got used for a while then the songs died off the charts, but nobody seemed to complain - they didn't sound as full to me, but I have heard much worse. Would compare them to a little better quality than Star disc.

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

Knitshow, you mention Sound Choice has a European branch but can't find it on their website. Do you have any info on their european whereabouts ? Thanks if you do.

Go to their website & on the homepage on the right sideunderneath the products box is a drop down menu labled "Visit Our International Distributors".

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

Actually Cantalopera is an Italian outfit that as far as I know has no affiliation with any U.S. company nor is it widely distributed among most karaoke suppliers (which is a shame). There backgrounds are wonderful and they also have the feature of lead vocals which can be deleted to help in singing.

I know this isnt for everyone, But around here it is like a rave. and as far as I know there are no conflicts of interests with the sponsors on this bbs as they do not carry it.

But, www.cajunkaraoke.com has 1 cdg out so far with honest authentic cajun music & lyrics. He claims to be working on more, but so far he has only one cd out. it could become a collectors item.

Just a fyi

_________________
______________________________________
I'm Not Dead yet...... But every day Im getting Closer !

I only have discs for my personal home use, so I enjoy having the versions with the vocals included since it helps me learn the songs. If I know the song fairly well, it doesn't bother me as much when the words and music aren't perfectly synchronized since after a few listens I know where the problems are and can adjust.

My experience has been the same as most here and agree that for the most part, you get what you pay for. Obviously there are many exceptions. Pop Hits Monthly is pretty expensive, but after a few years when the songs are no longer current you can often get the discs for a substantial discount. I've never seen Sound Choice discounted more than a couple of bucks. Both brands are very good. I also like Song Factory and Ameri-Sing, which are not quite as good but a little cheaper.

Backstage is pretty bad. I wouldn't buy their stuff unless I could get it for five bucks or less per disc. NuTech is much, much worse. They'd probably have to go sub-$2 per disc before I'd buy them. I actually like Sweet Georgia Brown for the price; the music is good and it's really the graphics/synch (which are generally awful) that give SGB its bad reputation. Since you can get SGB on sale for practically no money, I think you can get the biggest bang for the buck.

I'm generally a bargain hunter and try to avoid paying full price for anything, so I've got a lot of low-end discs.

_________________
Reward: nine yen in drawer.

usually six months and you can get older pop hits monthly stuff for $5.00 cheaper... and even up to half price!

Nah, Sunfly discs are easy to get here. I usually order them from dbkaraoke for $19.99, a buck cheaper if they're having a sale. They are far and away my favorite disc manufacturer. Some of the old stuff is questionable, but everything they've put out in the past 2 years has been extremely impressive to me. And they offer cool songs that no US manufacturer would dream of making.

I have about a dozen of them, maybe more. I found that they are not as full as the Sound Choice tracks in most cases. That aside, for the money they are an excellent buy. I have country, rock, folk (O Brother soundtrack) and blues on this label and they are all excellent quality.

Remember this is only for the Karaoke Bay discs. The Singing Machine, MTV, K-Tel, and some other discs are of a far lesser quality.

The K-Tel discs don't have splash screens at the start w/ song/key/artist information, they just start.
The Singing Machine/MTV discs have some off versions (differnt lyrics) and often the music quality is lackluster at best.
The Singing Machine Original Artists Motown cd's are pretty decent though.

I don't own any of the Disney discs you find in stores so the jury is still out on those discs.


As for the other disc manufacturers:
Sound Choice - My prefered disc at this point. Pricier than some, but excellent overall.
Sweet Georgia Brown - for the price point not bad. The quality isn't the best but when you're getting the the 66 disc set (er, 65 disc set, throw away disc 23, Weird Al Yankovic - it's garbage!) for $100 it's well worth it to jumpstart a collection.
Music Maestro - The two discs I have from them are comparable to the SGB discs I have. The swing on MM is sometimes better and sometimes worse than SGB. Hit and miss for me... (both discs I have are in the 6000 range)
Nu-Tech - bought 1 disc to see how it was. Won't buy another - EVER.
Chartbuster - Overall pretty decent and a great price point but the color on the swipes isn't always clear - even after throwing the impedence switch on the RF convertor.

Matt was talking about the Sound Choice discs that are offered overseas but not here. They also have many releases that have been discontinued in the US that are still readily available in the UK.

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

$$ per song, Sound Choice is no longer the priciest, as a matter of fact if you read my previous post, they are actually much cheaper than some now days - on a $$ per song basis which equals value.

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

I had read the previous post. They are more expensive than KaraokeBay, and some of the other 'lesser' brands but cheaper than Pop Hits, custon discs, and some others on a per song basis.

They aren't the 'best' value, but are offering a far better bang for the buck with the new pricing. As a matter of fact, with the new pricing I'll be ordering the 5 bricks shortly after the first of the year.

BTW, I've been averaging 6-8 Sound Choice discs a month for the last 6 months and 2-3 from other branks... I think I need to find disc buyers anonymous.. (or at least my fiance says that she thinks I need to to find disc buyers anonymous!)

Oh, I wasn't counting the chain stores in the equation. On the most part I still don't consider them in a pro quality catagory - although I do have some myself, I don't think they compare to SC, PHM, CB (country only) and a small handful of others. I do think they are better than Star disc though - so I guess they could be pro quality since Star is considered "pro" quality.

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

I'm only a singer, not a KJ - and have about 60 of my own discs. If I could afford it, I would probably buy mostly Sound Choice for the expected consistent quality. The price is why I have very few SC in my collection.

I have 3 or 4 Karaoke Bay discs and was amazed at the quality of these bargains. In some cases, where I have multiple versions of songs, the KB version is the best!

I also have about 25 Sweet Georgia Brown - and for the songs I use off them, they are pretty good.

I have a few Priddis discs. I've heard KJ's complain about the Priddis selection, but for the songs I use them for they are absolutely the best (most like original versions) discs I have.

The remainder of my collection has a mixed bag of MM, LG, CB, etc and they vary from disc to disc.

Cantalopera karaoke brand (it is a opera karaoke disk set).

Best (Quality of Tracks): Sound Choice, Dangerous, Doctor Music, and so far Zoom has been decent.

Not a fan of Top Tunes for Quality... but they do put a lot of "popular" songs on one disc....which helps the purse strings a bit... if that is an issue for anyone (we find that ocassionally we need to go to Top Tunes....to meet requests for really new stuff, but eventually try to replace them with SC's when the $ allows).

Worst: Nutech and by far ....LEGEND....(absolutely terrible... so often lyrics are wrong!! and the music .... S U * * S.

_________________
[shadow=tomato]If you want your significant other to pay attention to EVERY word you say::
  TALK IN YOUR SLEEP   [/shadow]