Pre Purchase Questions

[BooBoo]

I sent an email to Sales but haven't heard back yet so I thought I would post the same questions here...

Hi,
I am seriously thinking of buying your Karaoke suite but I have a few questions.

First, here is where I am at. I have a work machine that is a Dell Latitude C800. It has the ATI Mobility M4 video with the NTSC out and a Sony CRX 700e CD-RW. I've run your demo on importing and writing to the CD and got decent results with cheap media. The CD+G creation created a perfect 75 second replica of a CD+G CD song that played back perfectly on the computer screen with your player.

Questions...

Would it be safe, then, to assume I could produce quality CD+G cds if I used the proper media with this setup?

I see that the new version of Karaoke Pro supports dual screens. Would the "karaoke" screen automatically go to the NTSC output on the laptop on this set up? I didn't get a chance to test this..

I am thinking of starting out on this machine but may change hardware very soon. How easy is it to move the software if I decided to switch over to my home desktop?

Is it possible to import a CD+G song with both sound and graphics, then replace the music. For instance, import a canned CDG, import the original version, remove the vocals, then merge the graphics and edited version of the original?

Is there a good source for song lyrics?

Thanks,

Duayne

[jahern]

You asked some good questions. I can't respond to all of them . Maybe 1 and a half.

MTU doesn't sell a product that separates lyrics from music. I've seen some on the market but never had any success. You seem to be expressing the need for a product that not only separates the lyrics, but also saves them at some sort of performance pace.

You can't get this from an existing cdg. However KPRO allows us to save projects. That means it allows us to Sync words at a certain pace and save it that way. We can substitute music, and the words will still highlight themselves at the pace that we did it at originally.

My experience with a vocal reduced file:

Create wave file of song.

Vocal reduce the file (you should now have two wave files)

Using original performance music, sync the words.

Save that as a CDG (excellent for learning)

Substitute the vocal reduced file for the performance one (It will be exactly the same length)

You can save it right away as a CDG without any further tapping.

This is your performance CDG.





Sites for lyrics

I don't bother with links to sites.

I just type a line from the song, in quotation marks, in my search engine. It usually takes me to several sites with the lyrics. Sometimes, to further refine the search, outside of the quotation marks, I type a couple of words that should probably also appear like: Lyrics, or Disney, or Beatles

Hope I have helped.

PS. You can take a cdg file, like one created using KPRO and copy it as a file to a disc using any CD burner. To create a CDG disc playable in a Karaoke player, you need special cd burners. I'm not sure if yours will work. Depending on which machines have the programs, you could create a cdg file at work, copy it as a file with any burner, take it home and create a Karaoke disc. It's usually desireable to have the whole package on one machine, of course.

[BooBoo]

Thank you very much for your reply. You've been very helpful. I also recieved a reply from the Sales group. They said that if my burner worked, great, but they don't recommend any burner but Plextor. They said they would work with me if I changed machines, and also echoed your thoughts on working directly with an imported CDG file.

The work machine is a laptop. I am formatting a second drive to use in it. I know I can reproduce CGD files that play back perfectly from the hard drive. The question is, will the drive write them back out properly. I may purchase one of these used units from work if it can do everything, and I'm thinking it will. If so, MTU might want to look at this unit since it has everything built right in it and won't need a USB Burner. I'll post here if I purchase and do more testing. It would be a great unit if a KJ wanted to go to a portable PC show. Great video (large LCD screen), great audio and a possibly compatible burner.
I am someone that will play with karaoke at home so I can have a few more querks than a KJ. I am hosting a K party this Saturday for friends and family. I can at least import my discs as a backup even if I can't reproduce them today. That way I'll feel better about using them around stightly tipsy people if you follow me. I can also remove some vocals on some original tracks if I have time and play them back as a regular CD in my CDG player. I don't really need the lyrics for the songs I can sing.

Thanks again,

Duayne

[BooBoo]

In reading through some of the other threads, (namely the one from the bootlegger) I see that sometimes one drive from a brand and model will work while the next of the same brand and model may not. I would assume, then, that just because I may have found a machine that has a drive that might work, the next machine may not. It's pretty hard to understand this, although I do understand that not every drive is created exactly the same in the factories. Why is it so hard to make a drive that is fully supported?

I post this for anyone that might be new, like me, so that I don't steer them in the wrong direction....

[MTUSUPPORT]

BooBoo,
We tested this Sony CRX 700E and it distorted most of the graphics on all of the drives that we tested.

I wouldn't recommend it, due to my testing of the drive.

[BooBoo]

I had done a little testing with it and it seemed to create CDG files fine but I noticed the same thing that you meantioned. I didn't test with top quality media so I didn't know if that would make a difference.

On another note, could you please help me get started with Microstudio. I sent an email in about not being able to register. It tells me I am not connected to the internet when I ran from the machine I planned to install it on. I created a floppy with the same result on two other machines, while trying to register with the floppy. The first and second machines were behind a Proxy and the last was from my home machine through a cable modem. I emailed two of the three files in but the reginfo.dat file wouldn't unload since it had zero bytes..

Please help!

Thanks,

Duayne