Karaoke Forums

please can someone confirm which is the best player to use on my lap top for karaoke tracks. the key features i must have are as follows
key change. once the key has been changed it must remember the change everytime so i dont have to keep changeing it
fade out. if playing a track once you press stop rather than stopping there and then i would like it to fade out slowly
fade in.  if you are comeing to an end of a track i would like to have the new track to start playing directly  so one fades out and the other will start to fade in thanx

Nope, you are searching for an Utopia.

not to be rude, but read down the list of other threads. the fourth one (at this time) is called "Laptop Karaoke software help "

PLEASE avail yourself of the advice already given out!

what kind of hardware are you planning on using? Usually anything pretty new will be resource plentiful, but just in case, you should probably start out asking questions by stating what you have, the research you've done, what you've CONSIDERED, etc...

best of luck... a lot of us just tried stuff until it worked...

winamp can doo al that you want, if your karqaoke tracks are int the MP3+G format

thanks for the constructive reply.  I do use winamp with two plug-ins, cross fader and pacemaker, which in my opinion is "utopia".  However, the copy of winamp I have is the freebie and I use it on my laptop and two desktops, but for some reason it always freezes on my lap top, quite embarrasing.  have you got any suggestions on how to overcome this so it is more reliable.  Do you think it is either the copy of winamp or my laptop?

What is your opinion ?

Many thanx
Switchblade

It could be either your laptop or winamp.  But to start, un-install, and re-install winamp, and see if that fixes the problem.  If it dosent, it for sure is your laptop.

I have a deadicated laptop that I do all my shows from, the only thing I have ever done to it is un-install all the crap ware that it came with (AOL, Virus Protection, Word Processing crap, and other software I will never us on it).  Once I got it cleaned up a bit, I installed Winamp and CDG plugin, and Sax and Dotty hoster.  This computer has never been on the net, or used for anythbing except karaoke.

Now on my home system, I do all my testing.  Installing all kinds of software, and screwing it up bad.  But I wipe the h-dreve celan about evey 2 monts, and re-install the OS when things start locking up.

If you find it is your laptop, and not winamp, wipe it clean and re-install the OS, and progs for Karaoke on the computer.  And if that laptop is use to do a karaoke show, make sure that that is the only thing you use it for.

Thanks I will take your advice and start with the laptop as it was given to me by a friend who used to visit some unsavoury adult sites!  Do you know if you can restore factory setting from start-up, the laptop make is a"Compaq"?
Please also can you tell me what "sax and Dotty hoster" is all about? As I have never heard of them.

Many thankx for the sound advice
Switchblade

One other thing you might look at is the amount of ram the computer has. If you are running several programs and plugins you may be running out of ram and making it spool to disk. this will cause it to hang up once in a while. as it is reading and writing.

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

what i use is winamp player with crossfader and pacemaker nothing else  will be opened apart from when i add a file in winamp directory do you think this is to much to run at one time?

Depends on the amount of RAM you have. With 1GB certainly not, with 128M, most likely.

See what your memory usage is while you have all the stuff up and running. Open your Windows Task Manager and click on the performance tab. It will show memory usage.

I really like Swift Elite 2.0 from TriceraSoft
http://www.tricerasoft.com/karaoke_software/Swift_Elite_Karaoke_Hoster.html

the only thing is it is really expensive. They have a demo you can download and try out.

Wrong on the Ram ammount...

On one of my PCs I run shows with 2winamps, pacemaker, crossfader, and Sax&Dotty Show Hoster All on windows 98.  This is a 700Mhz machine with 128MB memory, and works great.  So your computer has more than enough power to run karaoke!

Hm, interesting statement. I run Hoster from MTU, and will most certainly get audio drop-outs without enough memory.

Perhaps MTU hoster is a recource hog (it certainly is a $$$ hog ).  I have never had any problems with the PC as I have it setup.

Forgot to add I have a CDG compatiable CDROM drive in it.  The CDG Disk Player plugin for winamp allows winamp to directly play CDGs too.

Spent about $80 on software to do my shows ($100 if you include CDRWIN to rip the CDGs)