Some "starter" advice

[DeckstarDeluxe]

Pop into ASDA and purchase the '100 Karaoke' series. Think there are about 12 packs and contain everything you need for about £120. Any missing songs select-a-track is your friend

Waits for the incoming fire, but I have used these since November and is all thats needed Nice, simple and cheap
(have a catalogue done for about 6 discs if you want a track list emailing to give you an idea)

What is the quality of the backing tracks like??

Don't forget, if you're going to be running it from a laptop you will need to learn how to rip karaoke discs (CD+G) into a format that your karaoke program will recognise .I can't think of any laptop cdrom drive that will fully play a CD+G disc , the music will play but you wont be getting the graphics on your display.

Its the route I wish to go down and currently have Numark Cue (VDJ) running. Idealy wish to use this

[ppentertainments]

What is the quality of the backing tracks like??

As good as any other make IMO. I don't claim to be an expert on karaoke, but used for a fair few corporate gigs and never had any negative comments.

[Pink Elephant]

Once you find a make of CD&G discs you like, then stick to them.

If not you will get too many duplicates - remember they are £20 a month for 30 songs (eg Sunfly hits with most wanted free) so they are not cheap.

If you have a well known brand (not sure about the Asda series) then I use a software package to create my song books rather than type them in each update.

Please don't go out and buy a HDD full of songs unless you have the original discs. A pub gig is easier for them to come and check on you.

[hammy]

if you are going laptop route have a look at Siglos Karaoke Player/Recorder 1.2.6, I use this and it is a good program for £30 you can even set it to play background music as soon as the singer has finished and when the pain in the butt comes up to ask you "how long till i`m on" you can tell them exactly how long.
Go and get the free trial and have a play http://rbytes.net/software/siglos-ka...corder-review/

[Andy Goodtimes]

I have about 50 discs and manage with those. I bought a 36 disc set of Extreme discs from Cookies and then top them up with the double discs of up to date stuff every couple of months...think they're Zoom.

I will not do a full karaoke night because I hate karaoke but I was finding an increasing number of Bride's asking for some karaoke and I was missing out on some £400-£500 jobs with not doing it. Its easy to charge an extra £75 for a Wedding by doing karaoke. One thing I do say is if I do karaoke it has to be confined within a pre-decided slot i.e. 11pm-midnight. I won't keep flitting back and forth as it spoils the night. I already had a pair of 32 screens and a pair of 52s and a large screen and projector and various karaoke/DVD machines because of my conferencing work and I also show pictures and presentations and so on on request.

I would say go for it because if the pub night comes to nothing you'll almost certainly make the money back.

[Ajaysdisco]

I started with this and I still find most of the requests I get are on that set:
Linky

Don't forget this if your ripping:
Linky2

[DeckstarDeluxe]

Thats for that Ajay great find

[DazzyD]

Hi Neil

I think Hammy's suggestion of hiring in for the trial period is spot on. Many DJs hate karaoke with a passion as there's a fair bit of work involved and you have to deal with the drunks face to face a lot more than when just DJing. Therefore, you might decide it's not for you or it's just not worth the hassle and you've lost nothing (as you would have factored the hire costs in to the trial price!). If you do want to take it further, then you start buying the music yourself.

I've been doing karaoke for a long time now and started with the old Pioneer Laser Discs and karaoke video tapes! How things have changed! As for starter packs, the ones mentioned are particularly impressive given the prices (I've spent several thousands of pounds over the years on my collection!). Also, give Sing To The World a try as they do several starter packs.

Don't forget, if you're going to be running it from a laptop you will need to learn how to rip karaoke discs (CD+G) into a format that your karaoke program will recognise .I can't think of any laptop cdrom drive that will fully play a CD+G disc , the music will play but you wont be getting the graphics on your display.

You're not thinking hard enough! My old Dell Inspiron had a CD-ROM drive capable of reading and writing CD+G format (which is the ability to read/write sub-channel data in RAW format). Sadly, that machine died a few years ago. My new HP Compaq has a HP multi-format CD/DVD writer in it which, although can't write to this format, can read CD+G discs and will happily play direct from disc complete with graphics - no ripping required!

Neil, for ripping CD+G discs to MP3+G or BIN formats, I couldn't recommend CDG Ripper from Tricerasoft enough:

http://www.tricerasoft.com/karaoke_s...tion_Tool.html

It's a program I've used since it's early days and it's well worth the £20-odd cost!

[Glenski]

Hello

Happy to give some advice here...

If you want to go down the CD+G route then i'd suggest this multiformat karaoke player... the Madboy CD+G/DVD also comes with 22 Zoom karaoke CD+G's and all for the low price of £99 on Amazon (Click Here) as the player is also capable of playing the mp3+g format from a USB stick or USB HDD

If you are looking to go digital then the best software i have found to rip/convert/burn your CD+G's is Power Karaoke and they also have other software.

You can then buy CD+G starter packs from Zoom Karaoke or their download site Karaoke cc which has loads of stuff, then there is Selecta Track and others like Sunfly Karaoke and Easy Karaoke and not forgetting Mastermix and Sing to the World who also offer live karaoke streaming if a venue you use has a stable broadband internet connection

Not forgetting if you intend to format shift from CD+G discs to mp3+g then you will need one of these ProDub ...

If you need to generate any karaoke books then another good place to start is Karaoke Books as you can also add custom discs

I hope this is of some help to you

Thank you

Glenski

[DeckstarDeluxe]

Right I got the collection Mark posted to earlier.

Now can anyone tell me how much space does the "average" karaoke track take up. Need to work out if I need to play a karaoke player or go digital which is my preferred choice.