First Hoster Show

[CochrellGary]

WOW! Let me say that again, WOW! I am a retired software engineer and so I know a little about good code. Hoster is great code, what a great piece of software. Got the MTU laptop with Hoster on the 30th of January and finally got 380 CDG's loaded by this last Sunday, Feb. 9th. That gave me one day, the 10th, to plug it all in and give it the smoke test before our gig yesterday the 11th. Well the smoke test showed me where I needed to to hook things up and it all ran well. Then came the acid test, Hoster under fire. We had been using a Sony 400 CD player in our shows and averaging 15 songs an hour. Hoster now allows us to crank out 20 songs an hour and our customers couldn't be happier. The software worked flawlessly. We demonstrated the laptop and software to management and needless to say they were impressed. I think we have now guaranteed our longevity at the casino for the foreseeable future. Keep up the good work MTU. Great hardware and software.

[kedmison]

CochrellGary,

Glad it's working for you. I still have about 50 more disc to load befor I do the "smoke test." I am curious what compression did you use on Hoster? And alsom are you getting any "computer noises" filtering in through your sound system in between songs?

Thanks,

Kelly

[CochrellGary]

Kelly,

I am using the 128k compression ratio and getting a great sound from my setup. When I was giving my system the smoke test at home I did notice computer noise coming through. I am using an optical mouse instead of the touch pad and thought that might be some of the problem. When I unplugged the mouse and went to touch pad I got more interference. My solution so far is to just turn down the gain between songs. During our show when the gain was still turned up, I did not notice the interference but I think the casino noise was masking the low level RF noise. My next experiment will be to place some RF chokes in all my control cables. When I was entering my CDG's into the database I averaged 3 CD's an hour. I spent a few late nights building the database but it was all worth it.

Gary

[kedmison]

CochrellGary,

Thanks for the info. I'll try the mouse idea. I started using the 128k but after experimenting, I couldn't dectect enough differenc in 128k and 96k to worry with. So I started doing the remainder at 96k just to save a ittle more space. Also another question; maybe you or someone else may have a sooution. I have SKB gig rig that holds my mixer and presently my Sony 400 player. With the soon application of Hoster and my laptop. I'll not be needing the player, however I'm wanting to come up with some type of arm or extension that will adapt to the gig rig and hold the laptop. I use a wing on the right side for song slips. Trying to find something on the other side to specifically hold the laptop.

Thanks again,

Kelly

[Wayne White]

I'm not sure what your talking about as far as noise coming through. I now have 3 laptops in operation with Hoster & have not experienced any noise between songs. You may have some polarity problems to address, but these would have been present in your CDG setup too.

As far as something to set the laptop on, I use Hard Plastic tables. These come in 4', 5' or 6'. I used to use 4', then got to many CDGs and moved to 5'. Now with the 5', I can set a Rack & the laptop on it & still have room for Req Slips. When I take a taller standup rack, I use the 4' table for just the laptop & slips.

Wayne

[kedmison]

Wayne,

I'm not up and running with Hoster just yet; soon though. But I have givin' it a run a few times at home to determine my best compression which I have now decided on the 96k. While running hoster through my sound system I get a very noticable noise when not playing a song. The noise sounds like internal workings of the laptop. Such as when the hard drive kicks in. etc. I connect from the ear out on the laptop to my Mackie mixer. Is there somewhere else I should be routing my audio out from?

Kelly

[mikedomi]

you guys are not alone. We did some testing on the laptop and found this to be a ground loop in what appers to be the laptop power supply. The only way to get rid of this is to lift the earth ground by using a 3 plug to 2 adapter.

BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE!!!! WHEN YOU DO THIS YOU MUST PLUG EVERYTHING IN THE SAME POWER STRIP. DO NOT PLUG THE COMPUTER IN ONE PLUG IN THE WALL AND THE REST OF YOUR EQUIPMENT IN ANOTHER.

ALSO MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT LIFT ANY OTHER GROUND. I AM NOT TELLING YOU TO DO THIS. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK. AS OF RIGHT NOW THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET RID OF THE NOISE.

THIS NOISE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR DISC OR HOSTER ITS COMMING FROM THE LAPTOP IF YOU WANT TO CHECK THIS UNPLUG THE LAPTOP FROM THE WALL AND USE JUST THE BATTERY. THE NOISE WILL GO AWAY.

HAVE A GOOD ONE MIKE.

[Mr Music]

Is thier a way to search title and or artiest in hoster. Also how would you delete the dupes I am very interested in Hoster but would like to be able to do this.

Any help?

Thanks.
MM

[admin]

We hope to start beta testing Hoster 2.000 this coming Monday. It will allow rebuilding the Songs Database and handle multiple BookIDs automatically. Also, the Main Database has been updated, but we are sure there will still be some problem discs in it. It will take time to get all the problems solved. For example, the Chartbusters website has all their discs, but the songs are not ordered by track number, so all their discs were out of order.

However, if you have duplicate songs, you need to go into Windows Explorer and find the .kma file (the name has the brand-discID in it) and delete what you don't want. Then rebuild the Songs database and you're good to go. :w

We do have it in our spec to add in the Add HD Track and Add CD Track dialog boxes a new "Singer - Songname" field method to locate a song. Right now we allow by Brand-DiscID or HostID (which is printed in the Song Book from Hoster). This will not be in 2.000, but will be coming within a month... my estimate and I usually win! :t

[Wayne White]

Mr Music...Since the songs database is in Access, I set up a access database that uses the songs database file as a linked file. One form allows entering any part of a song name or artist name & runs queries to bring up all songs that match the text entered. I will give my code to MTU if they would like, but, unless they could re-write it in VBA, it requires that you have the Microsoft Access Program on your computer to run it. It is really great. The search results allow you to scroll through all of the songs that matched your text & displays whatever info you want, Title, Artist, BookID, Mfg Disc # & Track.

As far as the NOISE ISSUE from before; anytime I have any unwanted Buzz, etc coming through, I try the 3 to 2 ground lifts, if this doesn't work there are actually ground loops that are RCA cables with a resister in the middle that sometimes works, but, my laptops DO NOT make noises that come through my sound system. Hard discs grinding is not an audio signal & should not be picked up by the sound card. The sound is no different from my CDG Players, except I do have to run the Mixer at a higher volume, probably due to the normalization used in the import process.

Kelly...From the headphones out jack, I use a 1/8 stereo plug with a 3' wire splitting to 2 RCA plugs (from Radio Shack). Due to the wire length, I use couplers to another set of RCA cables. I don't use powered mixers. I have several mixers but mainly use Vocal Pro's KJ6200 (I have 4). I also have an Audio 2000 Karaoke mixer & a couple of Peaveys which I use as back ups & have ran my laptops on all 3 brands. I use all Peavey power amps & speakers.

Wayne

[kenpattx]

:e How on earth did you get 380 cdg's loaded so quickly. I received my new MTU laptop on Feb 6, and have nothing but problems loading. Some used cdgs have taken as much as 3 hours plus to load. Brand new ones take 45 min to load. I am right now watching number 101 disc load ( that means I only have 700 more cdgs to go!!! ) When MTU tried to help, one suggestion was to buy an enclosure for the Plextor burner (16-10-40) which is in another computer and use the USB port on the laptop and load the discs that way. I ordered but not yet received the enclosure. I have stayed up at night even. I really need help. Pat

[Wayne White]

Pat

Sounds like GaryC was flying....

I ran into some graphics problems etc (all of which MTU has fixed), but, other than 1 release where Hoster set idle for several minutes before starting to read each disc, I never had any problems loading discs. I have been finished for some time, but I believe 20 to 30 minutes was on the high end of what it took to input each disc. I used a USB2 connected Plextor (from MTU) and an MTU laptop.

Some discs that are really scratched up took longer & sometimes the resulting recordings were bad too. On a disc taking 3 hrs, you should play all of the songs right away, because there is surely at least 1 bad track that slowed down the process.

I expected to take 2 months to get my discs loaded. I would start 1 when I wake up, before I go to work, when I get home for lunch, before I leave to go back to work (I'm sure you get the point). I figured I could do 8 to 10 per day fairly painlessly without tying myself down to the computer.

Wayne

[CochrellGary]

Hi Guys,

Biggest reason for the fast loading speed is NOT loading directly into the laptop. I am also running Hoster on my desktop computer. The desktop is equipped with an MTU PleXWriter 16/10/40A CD burner and the computer is running at 2.8Ghz.

I am now using the laptop at all my gigs and after a four hour show the laptop gets a little warm. I have raised the rear of the laptop off of the table about an inch. The laptop runs 15 degrees cooler. I hope this extends the life of the laptop a little.

Gary

[admin]

In the Import Tracks Tab, the Change Settings button controls the Compressor/Limitor and Normalize processing. These are factory disabled.

However, if you have enabled them and have a slow computer (1GHz would be slow here), then importing and processing songs will take longer. If you want maximum speed on importing, disable Compressor/Limitor and Normalize. However, then your songs will need to be amplitude adjusted between them, requiring you to "operate" your system more.

Also, using a USB-1 port versus a USB-2 port for a USB CDR drive will take twice as long. Using an IDE drive will be the fastest you can run.

We are working on a change to make importing faster. :w

[kenpattx]

:e I still don't see that I have any problems. THIS IS A BRAND NEW MTU Laptop that I just purchased and received on Feb 6, 2003. Should be the very latest everything that they have as well as I had them increase the ram. I know I'm not a computer genius but just don't understand why it is so slow. I asked MTU if I could use the Hoster software on my other computer desktop for loading discs only and apparently you can't do that unless you buy another software. Doug and Bryan Cox at MTU have been nice enough to try to help me, but nothing changed the slow loading. Doug Cox told me that the Plextor burner which is in the new laptop is the fastest available for a lap top, but is slower than a Plextor for a desktop (I have a 16-10-40 Plextor) in an older desktop computer which we use for the MTU Microstudio.