Best To Buy!-What Brands!

[Mikelly]

Greetings From Australia

Hi All,
I'm thinkin about starting out as a KJ, ive got all sound equipment etc,-but need to arm myself with a few more thousand songs,(only got approx 700)
I know that SoundChoice- Music Maestro- & sunfly have excelent quality discs, but ive been on the internet (ebay), and found a place in NY USA, that sells the following Brands-- Can anyone please let me know if these are of High quality-or-i should stay away from them.
1/ Karaoke Hits (KGH) volumes?
2/ All Hits Maxx Pack(390 songs)
3/ Monster Hits MegaPack 100 Discs (1595 songs)
4/ Supercore 2005.
5/ Georgia Brown Toolbox Volumes? (195 songs)
6/ 66 Discs Georgia Brown (1000+ songs)

How Does a person in my situation know what songs i should even buy-i tend to think it's a little hard to buy such a large selection of songs that i've probably never even heard of the song before!

If you know of any excelent volume numbers in a particular brand -please let me know.

Many thanks for your assistance!

Mike.

[lirics]

Mike,

First Off, Congrats on wanting to take the plunge into
becomming a KJ, it can be FUN and REWARDING.

as to your question on brands and Quality, here's
some helpful information (keep in mind that this
is based on my opnion and from what I've seen
people using, so other people opnion may differ)

Top Brands: (in no particular order)
--------------------------
Sound Choice
Chartbuster
Monster Hits
Music Maestro
Radio Starz
Top Hits Monthly

Lesser Brands, but decent Quality
--------------------------
Sweet Georgia Brown
Backstage
Karaoke Hits
Nutek (SAVA & SAVP)

Good Quality County
----------------
Chartbuster
Country karaoke Classics
Northstar COuntry


Good Elvis and Oldies
-------------------
Music Maestro

Good Broadway & SHowtunes
-------------------------
Pocket Songs
Stage Stars


...whereas you dont want to limit yourself to just one
brand, it will be nearly impossible to not wind up with
duplicate songs across the brands and as you can see from
the list some brands are better the other at various generes.

Overall I like Charbuster for most choices, followed
by Sound Choice if I cant find it on anything else.

it is advisable to start with some pack, such as the "All Hits
Maxx Pack", Backstage, Sweet Georgia Brown", also
look into the Chartbuster Packs (Essentail Vol 1-5)

good luck

[djmadmaxx]

if it's cheap.. it's cheap for a reason. 'nuff said

[Mikelly]

Thanks for your replies!



May i ask you djmadmaxx- What does one class as "if its cheap- it's cheap 4 a reason"
What type of things happen- or - should i say what do you find is wrong with a disc if it happened to be a cheapie you bought?

Over here in Australia- we can pay as much as $55 Au Dollars( $42US ) for a sound choice disc with around 15 songs on it
We also have a company here that can do your own custom compilation -but that is VERY expensive if you need to buy plenty- it works out around $7 australian dollars per song ( $5.50 US)

What is CHEAP to someone new to buying disc's???


Many thanks from Down Under( Australia)

Mike.

[lirics]

Mike,

regardless of "djmadmaxx"'s opnion, alot of the inexpensive karaoke
brands actually sound pretty good, I personally use a bunch of
"sweet georgia Brown", "backstage" and "Karaoke Hits", of course
not all thier version of songs are good, but then again I have some
"sound choice" versions that suck.

So use whats best for you and your budget, you can always upgrade
at a later time. remember everyone's entitled to thier opnion
and you must come up with your own.

good luck

[djmadmaxx]

that just the thing.. the cheap brands are much more hit and miss., for every good song you might get 10 bad ones. some brands are better than others

[swany]

Chartbuster 450s are a good way to start. They have I through V now. So thats 2250 in five packages. Try E-Bay for deals on these after shopping around. They were sell these with a JVC303 included a while back and I had an extra CB450 when I was done. I noticed while shopping for II Through IV there seemed to be a quite a few deals on them.

[Island Extreme]

my favorites:

Sound Choice (most expensive too)
Top Tunes
Top Hits Monthly
Pop Hits Monthly
Sunfly

Ya never know:
Sweet Geogia Brown (many sound bad many sound fine - cost is LOW)
Nu Tech (better than SGB)
DK Karaoke - I don't know if they're just old tracks but some are really bad
some are really good

[Karaoke John]

Besides the obvious Sound Choice, and Chartbuster. A lot of my singers like the Karaoke Bay versions which according to the posts is the only company which has paid the royalty fees ect to reproduce songs as Karaoke versions,and can be bought at the local Wal-mart when I go grocery shopping . Zoom and Radio Starz also sound good. All of these are easily imported to hoster I have had trouble with Sound Choice and Chartbuster not importing in the past. Some fairly good inexpensive song packs include The Karaoke Party Packs sold by Karaoke.Com made by nutech and Song Factory 38special both will play well enough to get you started and have a good variety of new and old. I hope this helps
John

[jdavia]

I notice that no one has suggested "Prosing" as a supplier of Karaoke songs. You can order all the manufacturers discs there. plus they have many what they call weekend specials really cheap.
Personally I think a cheap disc consists of old and/or common songs, in part of or the whole disc. The artists makes a diffrence in price too as it does on CD's. It's not always the quality of the rcording.

[Monolith]

The biggest difference I have found in brands is usually in how they are created.

My top pick is Sound Choice. Yes they are pricey, but they usually use real instruments and backup singers which makes the biggest difference between them and the low end which are often MIDI or synthesizer based. A great starter from them is the foundation sets. You have nearly everything to run a starter show from Foundation 1 and 2 with bricks 1 through 5. There are 100 disks to this set in total for about 1500 songs (disc numbers are SC 7501 through 7600 if you are looking). If you look around you can find good deals on these. My only fault with Sound Choice in general is it takes a while to get new songs out because I refuse to buy their disks with accompaniment tracks. I don't feel that 7 or 8 songs is worth the price.

Pop/Country/R&B Hits monthly is a little lower on quality in some cases (not all) but gets the new stuff out sooner and is a decent shoice for backfilling and keeping updated.

I don't have any Chartbuster so I cannot speak for them.

I do have a lot of StarDisc. I feel the quality is similar to the _________ Hits Monthly. My main problem with StarDisc is that the volume and EQ levels are all over the place and they start almost immediately (often forget to lower the filler music levels early enough). I use them mostly for country songs.

I have one or two of many of the other brands on the market that I bought just to try them out. Some were horrible and others were hit and miss (more miss than hit).

These are my professional opinions from many years in the business. Others may disagree and please feel free to. But to start off I would spend the cash to buy the Sound Choice Foundation sets with all of the bricks. These have never done me wrong and I still carry them with a small cheap player as a computer failure backup.

Best of luck getting started,
Jon

[Garry A. Leslie]

Hello Mike,
As you're "Down under" you may need some Bitish stuff for your sessions,
Sunfly carries a lot of current top hits and plenty of 50s, 60s, and later, with a number of "Oz" singers represented, quality is pretty good and near to the originals.
Plenty of bargains but as usual you will need to search. Ebay is always a good starting point.
Only mention this as most of the replies you get will primarily be from US KJ's,
who will generally use US music. No offence intended.

Incidentally one reason for cheap stuff and deals is that most modern stuff has a very short shelf life, stick to tried and tested songs which will last.
People are still singing Sinatra, Darin, Cash, and any number of established artists.
Regards from across the pond and the other side of the world.
Garry