Is it a necessity to have Microstudio to burn a CDG?

[Ramona Wilson]

A young lady from Hawaii has asked me what type of burner will burn her Karaoke CDGS, this information I found on the web page. Will she need to have Microstudio in addition to a MTU suggested burner? Please advise.

[GordonF]

Given MTU's stern warnings about CD Writer quality I asked my PC dealer carefully about the CDG compatibility requirement. The dealer happened to have a HP 9210e (external SCSI) drive.

While I had to pay a service fee like for any machine brought in for diagnosis, they agreed to sell me the 9210e only if it worked with the Microstudio Demo.

"I was tense!"
"I was nervous!"
"I guess it... just wasn't my night!"

...actually, it worked perfectly. I risked only a tech service charge and it was a small price to pay compared to receiving a possibly bad CD Writer in the mail or by courier. Like MTU says, there's still the chance the CDG capability won't work because HP doesn't test CDG in their factory.

I recommend SCSI drives and a bus mastering SCSI adapter for burning any CDs, including CDG disks, so you can safely do other stuff at the same time as the burning happens. The ATAPI burners, even the UDMA ones, hog too much CPU time and interruptions in the process will turn your disk into a coaster. Also use good quality media - while MTU rates Kodak third compared to Mitsui, I can't get Mitsui media up here and Kodak's gold dye CD-Rs work great, at least on the local Karaoke bars' players even when recorded at 4x speed (I haven't tried 8x even though the drive's supposed to support it).

Other software can read CDG disks and play them on the same list of drives that MTU specifies. I think only the Microstudio software understands the format that Karaoke Home Producer uses for .cdg files though since nothing else seems to play the files for me. It's also a nice generic CD Audio writer, though I'd like MTU to add the capability to burn audio CDs from MP3 files or from other audio files. My biggest gripe is conflict with Adaptec DirectCD, needed to handle CD-RW media like any other removable media, and its requirement to disable auto-insert notification, which other CDG players need to have working.

[Brian Corr]

I have two HP internal IDE CD/RW drives. One is the HP 8100+ and the other is the HP 9500. I have no problems at all apart from as explained in the last post about about CPU consumption. If you try opening some applications in mid burn it fails the burn and you are left with a half burnt disc.

If you are looking for software to burn disc to go with KHP look no further than Microstudio. Its very straight forward and all your questions and answers will be found on this forum. The tech staff here are very quick at responding to all posts. :)

[Cid_cat]

There is one other software package that I know of to reproduce CDG's or make custom assemblies. I have not tried it so I cannot comment on its ease of use. I agree with a previous post in this thread about microstudio and how easy it is to use. Straight forward buttons and good support. Why go anywhere else?

cid

[Ramona Wilson]

I really hope that you guys understanding my question. The question is along with a cd burner will this person need (have to have) microstudio in order to burn a cdg? Please advise.

[Cid_cat]

Ramona,
There are several posts that already answer your questions.
Please read in the forum about which CDR's will handle the CD+G format. There are several but not every CDR will work.
Also, my previous reply would answer the software requirements. Microstudio is very easy to use and inexpensive to purchase but there are other packages that can do the same things.

YOU MUST HAVE SPECIAL SOFTWARE TO COPY CD+G SUBCODE.

Thanks,
Cid

[Ramona Wilson]

Thanks for answering my questions. I will tell her yes she does need to purchase microstudio because the burner alone will not do it.