Hoster 4.21 Vs. 4.22

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by kod

Skybird,
A power conditioner regulates the power to a steady flow so that you don't get spikes in power. Computers work best when the power is steady.

I don't ever remember anyone recommending something like that before. I just plug the laptop directly into a wall or into a normal power strip/surge protector. Once I week I have to use an extension cord also.

[kod]

Skybird,
I don't know if it's always necessary, but it's probably best to use one. Most of the Bars where I play are old and power is not always from top of the line wiring.

Even using it, Hoster was still stopping!

The bar where I play on Thursday nights is over 40 years old and the section where I play was added about 20 years ago...

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by kod

Skybird,
I don't know if it's always necessary, but it's probably best to use one. Most of the Bars where I play are old and power is not always from top of the line wiring.

Even using it, Hoster was still stopping!

The bar where I play on Thursday nights is over 40 years old and the section where I play was added about 20 years ago...

I think I better look into getting me one. Hoster still stops on me when using BA too. I'm beginning to think it's just you & me I'm updating again, adding SP2 on Vista. Maybe even upgrading to IE8, although it is still listed as "Optional" for Vista.

Where do you buy a "power conditioner"? I just searched Radio Shack & it didn't come up.

[kod]

Skybird,
Google "Computer Power Conditioner."

IMHO, you don't need to spend a lot of money for one.

Go to this site and read: http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_surge_strips_vs/

An excerpt form this site: Power line disturbances can destroy, degrade, and disrupt electronic systems. Plug-in surge strips are only capable of reducing surge energy — not eliminating it. Plug-in power conditioners that include a surge diverter, isolation transformer, and power line noise filter in their design can eliminate system destruction, component degradation, and operation disruption by exhibiting much better control over surge voltages.

[ddouglass]

The only thing I can add though is that unless it is an UPS (battery backup) also, then it will not take care of low voltage drops. The problem with an UPS though is they are very heavy to carry around because of the battery. Mine here at home kicks in quite a few times a week because of voltage drop outs (old wiring and too small a transformer on the pole).

Low voltage may or may not cause damage as much as spikes, but it can cause problems with the computer's operation. That said I would say that for you two, at least for the time being it would be best to leave off using the BA. Hoster does have the capability to import those MP3 files you use for the BA and playing them from the playlist too. That is what we do for 15 - 20 minutes before show time.

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

The only thing I can add though is that unless it is an UPS (battery backup) also, then it will not take care of low voltage drops. The problem with an UPS though is they are very heavy to carry around because of the battery. Mine here at home kicks in quite a few times a week because of voltage drop outs (old wiring and too small a transformer on the pole).

Low voltage may or may not cause damage as much as spikes, but it can cause problems with the computer's operation. That said I would say that for you two, at least for the time being it would be best to leave off using the BA. Hoster does have the capability to import those MP3 files you use for the BA and playing them from the playlist too. That is what we do for 15 - 20 minutes before show time.

Dale, have you ever run BA during an entire 3-4 hour Show? If not, then how do you know that it's our machine & not BA causing Hoster shutdowns? There were apparently many users requesting BA that got MTU to add this feature. Since then, very few people on this forum even talk about BA or have let us know how they liked it once they got it. And now, I see many more say that they still use a separate program for playing their music files in-between, so that makes me wonder, how many people are actually using BA.....?????

Also, can I ask what prompted you to ask what kind of "power conditioner" was being used, which started this discussion???

[kod]

I am definitely going to go back to my little mp3 player I was using before I moved to Hoster. I can do without BA in between Karaoke songs, but I do like to play music before I start the show.

I would like to have some type player on my laptop so I wouldn't have to carry an add-on, but I'm very cautious about putting anything on my Show Laptop that might conflict with Hoster...

[Roy Dennis]

I had a little incident myself at my show last night, I think it was BA related. BA enabled but not visualization, As the playlist song finished BA kicked in and at the same time I pressed an instabutton "Cheering", a terrible screeching sound came out of the speakers, I had to immediately turn volume on my mixer to zero. pressed the off button on BA turned volume back up and all seemed normal, pressed play for next singer Cue came up and stayed there, couldn't seem to do anything else so x out of Hoster and restarted the rest of the evening was OK but I didn't use the same insta button again. Have not Been able to duplicate it at home.

One difference in my home testing is I only have the on board Sound card, at my show I use both on board and usb sound card, whether this has any bearing on it I doubt as all the sounds were still routed through the on board card. I only use the USB sound for recording software.

Roy.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by Skybird74

Dale, have you ever run BA during an entire 3-4 hour Show? If not, then how do you know that it's our machine & not BA causing Hoster shutdowns? There were apparently many users requesting BA that got MTU to add this feature. Since then, very few people on this forum even talk about BA or have let us know how they liked it once they got it. And now, I see many more say that they still use a separate program for playing their music files in-between, so that makes me wonder, how many people are actually using BA.....?????

Also, can I ask what prompted you to ask what kind of "power conditioner" was being used, which started this discussion???

Yes I have run extended test shows at home with the BA on the whole time and never had any problems. As I said we don't use it during our shows mainly because our patrons don't like it. Too confusing to them. MTU has said all along that those who have under-powered computers (most of those being laptops) would have problems with using the BA with or without visualizations. This is a very large processor hog compared to the rest of Hoster. This is also why we ask the age of the computer and when or if it has ever been cleaned internally (mainly laptops).
The reason I asked about his power conditioner was to look it up and see if it had a battery backup to control low voltage. Surges will not cause the computer to have reduced power available but a low A/C input will. That is not to say surge isn't a problem but not the same kind of problem.
I have no doubt that the BA needs more work to fine tune it and get the amount of processor time down to make it work correctly for everyone.

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

Yes I have run extended test shows at home with the BA on the whole time and never had any problems. As I said we don't use it during our shows mainly because our patrons don't like it. Too confusing to them. MTU has said all along that those who have under-powered computers (most of those being laptops) would have problems with using the BA with or without visualizations. This is a very large processor hog compared to the rest of Hoster. This is also why we ask the age of the computer and when or if it has ever been cleaned internally (mainly laptops).
The reason I asked about his power conditioner was to look it up and see if it had a battery backup to control low voltage. Surges will not cause the computer to have reduced power available but a low A/C input will. That is not to say surge isn't a problem but not the same kind of problem.
I have no doubt that the BA needs more work to fine tune it and get the amount of processor time down to make it work correctly for everyone.

Thanks! I didn't think my computer was "under-powered", but

[ddouglass]

KOD,
Just did some research on your laptop at Dell, and found there are updates, especially for the Bios and Audio along with some others that came out in April this year that may be a big help.

[kod]

Dale,
Thanks for investigating this... Are these updates something I download from Dell?

Since Hoster didn't stop at all last Thursday night without using it, I am not going to run BA again anytime soon.

I have a show tonight (Thursday) and will see what happens. I'm now going to use Windows Media Player to play music prior to my show. I agree with not using BA between songs. Most of the time, only a little bit of a song gets played before the next song starts.

The visualization comment keeps getting mentioned here, but I have no idea what anyone is referring to, so it's apparent I don't use it.

I use only a singers monitor, because I don't like the whole bar watching and singing with the words on multiple monitors. I want them to watch the singer. If they know the words, they can still sing! Also, if the singer makes a blooper, no one really notices.

[ddouglass]

yes go to Dell website and under support they have downloads.

[billyo]

Originally Posted by Skybird74

Dale, have you ever run BA during an entire 3-4 hour Show? If not, then how do you know that it's our machine & not BA causing Hoster shutdowns? There were apparently many users requesting BA that got MTU to add this feature. Since then, very few people on this forum even talk about BA or have let us know how they liked it once they got it. And now, I see many more say that they still use a separate program for playing their music files in-between, so that makes me wonder, how many people are actually using BA.....?????

Also, can I ask what prompted you to ask what kind of "power conditioner" was being used, which started this discussion???

i only used BA on my show once and i stop using it , didn't have a problem with it,it's just you can only play a few sec. of a song anyway, and in my opinion BA is only used to fill in for dead time, which is under a minute or less and for slow shows..i have a Furman power conditioner and and it measures the line voltage from 90-120

[kod]

Dale,
I went to Dell and downloaded 7 files and have installed them all and Hoster is working fine here at home. I guess my Thursday night show will be the real test...

At my Thursday night show, I did not have any stops at all. Bar was cool, everything fine. I also did a Saturday night show in a hot garage (no a/c) and Hoster didn't stop there either so I guess it's not a heat problem. Everything went fine...

On another subject, I had a gentleman bring in a Flash Drive with his Karaoke songs on it, but I couldn't figure out how to extract them. Is there a way to do this?

[ddouglass]

No Hoster doesn't recognize flash drives. Depending on what format they are in you might have been able to copy them to a temp folder on the hard drive and import from main screen that way.

[Roy Dennis]

You can play files from usb or sdcards from the K-oke Tab. providing the files you are trying to play are in these formats: MP3+G, Kma, WMA+G, or zip.

Roy.

[kod]

Roy,
Thanks ... I'll try that the next time...

It's the first time anyone has approached me with a flash drive.

[kod]

Well, last night (Thursday) the "Hoster Stopped Working" bug bit me again! It stopped twice, once about 90 minutes into the show and again about 30 minutes before the end...

I've quit using BA altogether! I now use Windows Media to play music before the show and no more music during the night. I do not take breaks. I run from beginning to end without stopping to get as many singers up as possible in a night ...

I do not start Hoster until I've shut Windows Media down!

I guess I'll just have to learn to live with it...