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NEO-22 Ripping CD+G to SD Card Quirks

Karaoke disc copying software and CD burners.
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ragdyann422
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 2:14 pm
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

NEO-22 Ripping CD+G to SD Card Quirks

Post by ragdyann422 »

Since there's not a ton of info out there on the NEO-22 I figured I'd throw in my experience for anyone who might be looking.

The NEO-22 has the ability to rip your CD+G's directly to an SD card (up to 32G) in mp3+g format.
At 128 bit-rate, you'll be able to cram hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands of tracks onto a single 32G SD card. I ripped 742 songs and barely took up 3G of space.

Before you go guns blazing into the ripping sunset, there's a few major points to highlight.

Note: I ripped all tracks to a single folder that the NEO-22 created called "CDG to MP3". There is probably a way to rip each disc to individual folders but, for home use, it'll make for unbelievably fast song call-up if everything is in the same folder. The only caveat is that you must be extremely diligent and organized as you rip.

The absolute first thing you should do before you put a disc into the player is start a spreadsheet (or add some additional columns to your current one)

Mine has the following column headers:
-- Artist
-- Song
-- SD Card Track #
-- SD Card Track Title
-- Disc Info

Artist & Song are pretty self-explanatory so I'm going to highlight the rest of them individually.

SD Card Track #
This (mostly) correlates to the order that you rip your songs/discs in and is the number you will enter to call up a song for playback.
Example:
The first disc you rip has 8 tracks on it and you rip them all.
The SD Card Track numbers will be 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
Hit the 1 button on your remote and it will pull up track 1 of that very first disc you ripped.

You'll notice the word "mostly" in parentheses.
I say "mostly" because we ran into 1 freak disc that randomly inserted itself in the middle of my track list. I'll have more on this later but suffice to say at this point, every other disc out of the 40 was perfectly sequential in its numbering and I'm pretty sure there was just something up with that disc.

SD Card Track Title
This bit of news is only sort of alluded to in the NEO-22 instruction manual (that I think was translated by a 12 year old Japanese kid as a school project for his English class) so I'm going to say what they only hint at:
Ripped tracks contain no artist or song title information.
Anywhere.


All tracks are in the following format:
TRK[Disc ID][Track #]

And look something like this:
TRKEB001 where "EB0" = disc ID & "01" = Track #
Note: Disc ID's are any combination of letters and numbers and seem to be 3-4 characters in length.

When using Excel, you can just put that first TRK number in & then do that handy drag/copy auto-number thing.
We did a lot of things to try to get that artist/song info to show up but the NEO-22 just does not capture that data (if it exists at all). So unless you want to manually alter all of your mp3 & cdg files, just record the TRK numbers and save yourself a lot of work.

Disc Info
This is your traditional disc information that you use in case you want to use the physical discs (or need to because something breaks).
Example: SGB-0068 01
Where "SGB-0068" is the manufacturer's ID printed on the label of the disc and "01" is the track number.

Hopefully, that was useful.

Now, jumping back to that "mostly" comment earlier.

As I mentioned previously, every disc/song that I ripped just tacked itself on to the next sequential SD Card Track #. So after awhile, I stopped being as diligent about checking the SD Card files against my spreadsheet and just kept on ripping and recording in my spreadsheet.
Suddenly, all of my SD Card Track #'s were off... a lot...and I was 500+ songs in and facing the prospect of having to sort and then manually go line by line with the machine & the spreadsheet.
It ended up being a single disc that caused all the mayhem and that disc was odd for a couple of reasons.
First, the track numbers printed on the front of the disc were messed up.
Second, there were tracks on the disc that weren't printed on the front of the disc.
Those factors caused my numbering to be screwy all around for that particular disc and because of that screwed up my spreadsheet a couple ways.

Here's where having a systems administrator programmer linux guru type in your house can really save you a lot of time. And if you want more information exactly what my husband did let me know. The short version is there are standard utilities in linux/unix that can compare & contrast & sort text files and csv files. These should be available on most Macs and are most likely available in a program called CYGWin which is a linux command shell for Windows.

However, you can do this manually, by opening the text file songlist generated by the NEO-22 in Excel. Use colon as delimiter and that should then give you 2 columns which correspond to the SD Card Track # and the SD Card Track Title of your spreadsheet. Sort your spreadsheet and the songlist by those TRK numbers. You can then do a side by side comparison pretty easily (though time consuming).
Once you're confident everything matches up, you can just copy & paste the SD Card Track # column from the songlist file into your spreadsheet.

When I printed out my songlist from Excel for my friends:
I highlighted the first 3 columns (Artist, Song, SD Card Track #).
Went to File / Print.
In the section where you can choose to print all sheets, selected sheet or selected cells, just choose to print out the selected cells.
You'll end up with just those first three columns and your friends won't be trying to figure out the significance of TRKEB001 and SGB-0068 01.
:)

Hope this helps anyone who has picked up this system!
~jen~


mnementh
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Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:41 am
Location: Dundee, Scotland

Post by mnementh »

Hi Jen,
nice load of information there.

Many thanks.

As to naming tracks, it might be better to use your PC to do the job, as most of the better known rippers can access an online database to name the files as they are ripped.

However and it's a major "however", what they do NOT seem to do is to assign Tags to the MP3 file and this information is what most equipment uses to identify the track title, etc.

There is, however, plenty of MP3 tagging software out there for free that will generate the tags from the filename.

O.K. it's a bit of a pain in the butt but this would make the files easier to maintain.

Also, one little piece of software I would definitely recommend is "Copy in Order" that does exactly what the name suggests.

It copies files in strict alphabetical order from source to destination.

Onyhoo, glad your first show went well (from your PM) and keep up the good work.

Sandy
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Matt3512
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Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2011 6:31 pm

rsq-neo-22 ripping proplems

Post by Matt3512 »

I have a RSQ neo-22 player and I am having proplems ripping cd+g to mp3g to usb 2.0 storage. I always get the words "disk error" but it plays the disk just fine....can someone help me please
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mnementh
Posts: 674
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:41 am
Location: Dundee, Scotland

Re: rsq-neo-22 ripping proplems

Post by mnementh »

Matt3512 wrote:I have a RSQ neo-22 player and I am having proplems ripping cd+g to mp3g to usb 2.0 storage. I always get the words "disk error" but it plays the disk just fine....can someone help me please
You need to provide clearer information about your error.

When do you get the "disk error" message?

Everytime you play a disk?

When you try to rip a disk?

Asking a question without giving sufficient detail will be unlikely to get an answer, I'm afraid.

Sandy.
P.S. welcome to the forum.
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Matt3512
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Post by Matt3512 »

only when ripping the disk, the disk plays fine
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mnementh
Posts: 674
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:41 am
Location: Dundee, Scotland

Post by mnementh »

Matt3512 wrote:only when ripping the disk, the disk plays fine
Again, more detail required.

Presumably, the machine fails to rip the disc after the error message is displayed?

Also. are these genuine CD+G discs, not copies (sorry, should have said backups)? :roll:

If so, do you know anyone else with an identical machine?

If you do, do they get the same problem. If they do, then there is almost certainly a problem with the firmware in the machine.

Have you contacted the manufacturers, Re. your problem. You'll find most manufacturers will bend over backwards to answer your questions, as they want to sell their equipment and people having difficulty with their kit won't make for good sales.

RSQ are VERY good in this respect.

Sandy.
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ragdyann422
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 2:14 pm
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Post by ragdyann422 »

So I'm back... :)
And with some more fun info on ripping from with the NEO-22....

This episode is about TRK/Disc ID stuff....
I'm sticking with my initial guns of just ripping & keeping track of those TRK numbers. Renaming the files on the SD Card is just too time consuming and, overall, not worth it.

I've been steadily adding to my collection and now have around 2000 songs which, for what is really just a fancy home system, has made for some awesomely fun parties. :)

However, I've run into a fascinating new problem while ripping....
Out of the discs I have, I've run into 2 discs that have the same Disc ID as other discs I have already ripped. I had assumed that those Disc ID's were proprietary to their specific karaoke disc. I have a lot of discs at this point so my guess is this is a numbers game on how often the issue will crop up... I also wonder if I unwittingly ended up with bootlegs or something despite going through what I thought were totally legit channels for my CD+G's.
But I digress.
Because this issue sucks.... especially that first time when you're sitting there wondering wtf just happened and why in Hades has your entire system just frozen up.
Yep.
It freezes the whole system. Completely.

Why does it freeze?
Basically, you're trying to rip a track that already exists on your SD card (or flash drive or whatever you're using) but the system isn't sophisticated enough to say "Do you want replace the existing file?" so it just stops.

Fall out of this:
You will either have to re-rip or totally delete that original file on your SD card.

Yep. Lame. If you're lucky, like I was, you've really only lost a duplicate or a song you didn't give 2 craps about.

The work around:
When going to rip a new disc, I pull up the ripping screen, then view the tracks. I cross-check the TRK[Disc ID] against my spreadsheet. If it doesn't exist, I rip away.
If it does exist, I turn off the system, pull the SD Card out, insert a USB flash drive & rip to the flash drive. Then I take that out, rename the files to their actual song titles (or whatever I want), and copy those files over to the SD Card to keep everything together.

I've found it to be worth taking the time to do this. It seems to be sporadic and 1 out of every 100 discs isn't too big of a deal. Obviously, the first time was a shock & I learned my lesson so when it cropped up again, I had a game plan. :)

Having my entire library on a single SD Card makes the whole thing so easy... and really beats out the idea of ripping to the DVD with that proprietary NEO+G format. (but I'm just generally a hater when it comes to proprietary software & formats...)

Anyway, hope this helps...

As to the ripping to USB issues the guy above was having, I've never had a problem & I've done it a few times now. The tracks play from the USB or after I've transferred them to the SD Card. And the discs still work...
Definitely sounds like a question for RSQ and if you got an answer from them I would love to hear it!

Sorry to have been gone for so long... it's been a very very hectic 2nd half of the year for me!
~jen~
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ragdyann422
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 2:14 pm
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Post by ragdyann422 »

Husband is convinced I've pushed the song ripping & subsequent sd card reading capabilities to its limit and the internal memory on the player can't handle our song load.
The system crashes whenever I try to call up above song number 1340. I've ripped just over 6.5G of the supposed 32G capability this machine can read.

I've sent an email to RSQ to see what they have to say. Will update if/when I find out more.

In the meantime, this gave me the impetus I needed to go through all the duplicates I have and pick out the best sounding. I deleted over 120 duplicate tracks (and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida because for serious - not letting anyone play that beast in my house) and this appears to have fixed the crashing (furthering our belief that we've hit some sort of wall as far as the system's capabilities).
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maintech
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Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2014 11:14 am

Post by maintech »

Hi,

I've just purchased the RSQ NEO 22 (Nov. 2014) and ripped my first GD+G to a USB stick. So far okay, however I'd like to use actual song titles on the screen in the 'Song List'. I tried to input song title using remote but nothing seemed to stay!, and when I tried to recall info, the original track title was displayed again.

Are text titles possible, and can I do this on my computer instead of attempting to use the remote? We have a spread sheet with disk and track info, and could extract .txt data for use, but I'm not sure if the manual means the text is displayed or for paper use rather than player use.

Thanks,
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DanG2006
Posts: 1498
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 8:37 pm
Location: USA

Post by DanG2006 »

mnementh wrote:Hi Jen,
nice load of information there.

Many thanks.

As to naming tracks, it might be better to use your PC to do the job, as most of the better known rippers can access an online database to name the files as they are ripped.

However and it's a major "however", what they do NOT seem to do is to assign Tags to the MP3 file and this information is what most equipment uses to identify the track title, etc.

There is, however, plenty of MP3 tagging software out there for free that will generate the tags from the filename.

O.K. it's a bit of a pain in the butt but this would make the files easier to maintain.

Also, one little piece of software I would definitely recommend is "Copy in Order" that does exactly what the name suggests.

It copies files in strict alphabetical order from source to destination.

Onyhoo, glad your first show went well (from your PM) and keep up the good work.

Sandy
I believe that Power Karaoke's ripper does do mp3 tags.
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