Karaoke Forums

The reason I do it...  

Don't have to lug around CDs (karaoke and DJ) or woory about space to store them.
Don't have to worry about skipping discs (I play at place we some really bouncy floors).
I can run adds/custom backgrounds on the TV screens.
If the persons writes down the wrong song, I can switch it in about 5 seconds.
Takes me about 5 minutes to rip a disc to my system.
When I was running discs, I had a lot more problems than running a PC.
I can easily switch/manulipate my rotation.

PRICE is not a concern.  At the time I switched to a laptop I didn't know then what I know now.  You can easily setup a PC based system for $200 or less.
How much is a good CDG player theses days?

I'm no where in the same league as you guys being a home user.  I know I would get ticked off swapping discs for family and friends.  Also, I'd blow my top if I went to do something and came back and found my cousin changing my karaoke CDs without asking me.  In the process, he or she would probably scratch my backups.

Question:  For those of you who use CDs and not a computer, do you use copies or originals?  If you took copies to your shows, would that be considered illegal?

Use mostly originals, I have backed up some of my hard to replace discs.  Yes technically anything other than the original is illegal.

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American rules are not as strigent as other countries, I have a friend who was investigated as he was using copies. Nothing came of it as he was able to produce a 1 for 1 original for every copy.   The authorities are more interested in multirigging off of the same library without owning a second copy of the discs. They also seem to look the other way when a brand is no longer produced as long as they have an original copy to back it up.

We use all originals and in 15 years we only replaced the original KJTools set, one song off of two discs started to skip.  These discs were used virtually every night for I believe over 10 years.  The other eight discs are fine but it was just as cheap to get a set on sale as to try to purchase two single discs.  Not bad for have around 1,500 discs or more.

Someone writes down the wrong song we can also switch it within 5 seconds.  This guy knows his library inside out.

We have a tight grip on our rotation without the need of a computer, it's just using a little common sense.

$200 for a laptop and all the software required to run a show, where at.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

You might be able to get an old laptop without an operating system (I got 2 myself)
off Ebay or Yahoo auctions.  Actually there is a site www.notebookmall.com  where you can get it with operating system for maybe a little less than $300. Then all you need is the karaoke program, the external drive, the sound system and the songs and you got your setup.