Blending DJ music and karaoke

[gduns - with the Lord]

I also use a laptop. But I don't run fullscreen on hoster & media player. you can shrink the windows, and keep the mediaplayer below the hoster. and after you start the karaoke song, go to the bottom of the screen and slide the volume down as the hoster song comes up.

Hoster & media player both use the default sound card. you will have to go to a higher end dj program to use a separate card like BPM studio. But then BPM studio wants to take the full screen. To me this is too much trouble.


just my thoughts........

[jsmith]

I use a laptop with a dual output sound card ( Echo Indigo ). I use VirtualDJ to play "filler" music with. Hoster gets one output and VDJ gets the other. Each output is run to a different channel on the mixer allowing me to manually fade between the two. What you will need, besides another sound card, is a program to play your filler music that will allow you to assign it to a certain sound card.

[big daddy]

I use laptop with Echo Indigo Dj sound card and BPM Studio Pro along side of Hoster. Out of Echo sound card channel 3/4 into one channel of mixer and out of laptop sound card into another channel and have Channel 1/2 of Echo saund card for my headphones. We ussually do about 60% Karaoke and 40% DJ.
BIG DADDY

[bjswaim]

jsmith or big daddy,
I am currently running OtsDJ along with Hoster and am considering getting Echo Indigo DJ so I can run each on a different channel of my mixer. OtsDJ is able to assign to any sound card you have. Since you are running both softwares I'm assuming you can assign Hoster to which ever sound card you wish. Can you guide me through the steps of assigning Hoster to a specific sound card or channel of the Echo Indigo DJ. Can I run my dj program out of one channel of the Echo Indigo DJ and Hoster out of the other channel of the Echo Indigo DJ? Thanking you in advance for your help and knowledge.

[jsmith]

You don't need to assign Hoster. It will automatically use the default, which will be channel 1/2 and you can use channel 3/4 for OtsDJ. You will really like this sound card setup. I have considered getting OtsDJ. Can you give me a rundown on some of the better features?

[big daddy]

I use the control panel sounds setting to use my internal sound card as default. that is what Hoster will use, then I set up BPM to use the Echo Indigo DJ 3/4 for player output and 1/2 for monitor output. I like to use the volume control on Echo 1/2 for my headphones. Always scares me to use the internal sound card and volume for headphones have had confilct problems it it is not set to default and you try to raise or lower the volume. So I leave it on high and let Hoster use it. I also made sure I had at least a 16 bit sound card built into the computer.
BIG DADDY

[bjswaim]

Thanks guys for the input on Echo Indigo DJ. It looks like this is a good way to go. Jsmith, the features I like most about OtsDj are two-fold. It has an amazing mix point technology. It is built in. It automatically mixes one song into another and it does an amazing job. You can also change the mix point manually for specific songs so they begin and end at a different point. I have used this specifically on songs I have from live performances, getting rid of the audience noise before and after the song. The other thing I like is that I can categorize each song into as many categories I wish. If I have a country song that is good also for country dance, I can create a category for "country" one for "country dances" and also, if I want, create a category for "two-step" and then when I'm doing a country dj gig I can enter songs from the country category or if they are wanting dances or a specific dance, then I don't have to "remember" what song is good for which dance, etc. And, I do these categories for all my genres. It makes it real easy to pick songs while you're at the gig. Also, the next release of OtsDj will have beat mix technology which will be great for those dance club scenarios.

[mooman]

As well as hoster for cdg's I also have winamp running on my computer. Winamp will play mpeg videos in a detachable window pretty similar to the hoster window, this is what I use for my laserdisc collection that I have imported onto hard drive. You can open more than one instance of winamp so you can also have it running your mp3 collection all with seperate slide contolls for volume. You can use 1 sound card for all 3 on a laptop or install a second soundcard in a pc and assign winamp to use that. Not bad for a free programme

http://www.winamp.com/

[mindonstrike]

MOOMAN wrote:
"Winamp will play mpeg videos in a detachable window pretty similar to the hoster window"


I too am using winamp for mpeg (my vcd collection) but still need to carry around the VCD's if the singer needs a pitch change. I've tried several pitch change plugins but have yet to find one that works with mpeg. Did you find one or are you in the same boat I am?

Sam

[mooman]

No I am pretty much in the same boat now. Untill my partner plugged the wrong transformer into it I used an external keychanger called a ninja. This was a brilliant bit of kit - unfortunately I cant find another one as yet. The search continues

[RB Whewell]

I am using e-jay for standard music and Hoster for the karaoke. I use the default sound card for both. The e-jay has two MP3 player decks and indivdual slider volume controls as well as a fader to mix between players. I start a karaoke song and fade out the track that is playing on the dj software. This seems to work well excluding the inability to use headphones to que up sound effects and sound bites from the program. I will look into a dual output sound card, this seems like the ticket if you as me.

[Beavis]

what we need is a sound manager that lets us fade between programs. then we wouldnt need a slide button in hoster.

i personally like pcdjfx better than playing music in hoster.

[DJYale]

I use 2 sound cards, the onboard on my system can support up to 3 line outs and I also have an SB Digital 5.1.


I run Hoster out of one output to a mixer channel, a second out to another mixer channel for DJ music, a third line out from my DJ software for my headphones.

[Digital Party]

I use two laptops. One for DJ, one for KJ. Both go into my mixer. Echo Indigo on each. Hoster for Karaoke, OTSDJ for DJing. Yes I know it is expensive this way, but one can always back up the other if need be.

Works great for me!

Chris
AWare Entertainment

[pcgumshoe]

Here's my two cents worth!

The original poster claimed he's using the MTU Portable PC. If memory serves me, that is a "SHUTTLE" PC, correct? The Shuttle uses an NVIDIA Chipset. With the NVIDIA chipset you have a 5.1 sound system. The chipset drivers don't come with a small little program to re-assign your channels, but effectively, you can have 2 or 3 separate sound cards run off the front, center and rear output (the program takes away the In and Mic feature which I believe these other two stereo channels are originally assigned as).

Once you have the computer's NVIDIA sound card assigned as FRONT, REAR CENTER, then you can use the ASIO compliance feature (not supported yet in hoster I might add) to assign any of the non-default sound devices to other programs that use ASIO. One program that i use is called Virtual DJ. I found PC DJ limiting, as it only played MP3s. If you are like me and you use sound bites and other little funny things, you will note that you have some WAV, some WMA, some OGG, some whatever audio files INCLUDING MP3s. Of all the programs out there, I liked virtual DJ the Best. (If you plan on getting it, PM me, there are some quirks in the recent revisions to be resolved in the next revision, but there are work arounds)

Virtual DJ, similar to the program mentioned before (e-Jay) has dual trays, it will play sound FX (little jingles and what not) and it has dual faders for each channel or a crossfade feature that will fade the two. In addition, it has advanced mapping so you can assign Tray one to the left channel of your rear speaker out and tray 2 to your right channel of rear speaker out. Then you can assign your headphones to the center channel for cueing.

BE FORE WARNED, if you want hoster to work on its own channel, in your windows properties, whatever channel you have assigned as DEFAULT will be the channel that hoster will play with. If I may think out loud, hoster should have an internal ability to control its own audio but at a minimum select what sound device to play with. I know that that's a whole different codeing, but like I said, just thinking outloud ;)

So now you have these two programs running on your computer, but let's say that you don't have but two channels? Most mixers these days have a "CUE" feature on it and you can plug your headphones in to it. Once you do that, you can let the audience hear what is turned up, and you can cue up your jingles, bites, or whatever.

I run my show with the following running in the background: Virtual DJ, Hoster (current version), Microsoft Excel (for song searching), whichever recording software I'm using and anothe program that I am testing as a VJ software. BTW: Thanks for the CORE, I'm interested in checking it out as I converted a lot of my video bits from DVD, LD and whatnought to DIVX and like to play them on the big screen, maybe that will be what I can use that is better than Windows Media player and the last 10 programs I've tried.

One last thought, whether you are using a laptop or a pc, you can always go out and get a USB sound card. Creative labs has one that is based on the SOUND BLASTER live and it cost less than $40.... If you plan on recording from a laptop, this is a must as MOST laptop manufacturers do NOT include a line in feature, just a mic in and as we all know, that sound terrible when recorded.

I just bought myself, for my show, a Mackie Onyx Board, it comes with an optional FIREWIRE port to record every channel in and send back 2 channels. There is another piece of equipment out there that DJ / KJs should look into, it is the RANE MP4. This little device controls 6 line (or phone) ins and two of them are two separate USB AUDIO devices that will show up in your PC. It is a cross fader and takes up 1U (That's one rack space). It is a bit pricey at current prices (not seen one onthe street yet), it is $500.

Hope this info was helpful to you. If you have any other questions, you can send me an email from my website, www.barkaraoke.com or leave me a message here.

[fanerae]

HI JJ, I use Hoster for my Karaoke show and Atomix MP3 for "Filler" music. As with virtualdj, you can not run full screen as this will cause hoster to close if a song is still playing on it when you select atomix. Atomix has individual volumes for each virtual deck and can be utilized for crossfading out of hoster easily. Outperforms itunes, media player, etc. due to beatmatching, auto bpm, etc. Very reasonably priced and extremely stable and no extra souncard. I do a fair amount of club work as well as karaoke so the DJ features are important to me. Worth a look!

Fane
P.S. Scratch feature leaves a lot to be desired, if this is important to you.

[mgrowolski]

Hi
I use a gigaport AG to run my Hoster and PCDJFX a good quality usb soundcard with 8 mono outputs or 4 stereo outputs Hoster in on channel 1/2 and PCDJ on 3/4 and 7/8 and has worked perfectly for 4 years with no drop outs or anything at about $150 it is quite simply a great alternative