I would like to buy a notebook to replace the old Dell Inspiron 2650 that my wife has been using for karaoke gigs. It works ok but it is not powerful enough to send different video signals to the display and the external monitor simultaneously -- meaning my wife must wait for a singer to finish before she can use the notebook's display to set up the nest song.
Is there any consensus as to which say 3 or 4 notebook PCs are the best, or will any late model notebook do?
I am hoping to find one with as many audio & video outputs as possible, including optical audio out.
Best notebook PC(s) for karaoke gigs?
It's a 10 year old notebook. IIRC the processor is a Pentium 4.Bigdog wrote:How big is that computer as far as processor?
What hosting program are you running?
How much memory?
What type of files are they?
You can buy one piece of equipment to handle all your video stuff.
Memory is 512 MB (maxed out).
Hosting program is Karafun.
Files are .ZIP -- audio (MP3) + video.
She's happy with the way things work, except the notebook just doesn't have enough video processing power to send different signals to the display and the external monitor simultaneously.
The other thing that would be nice would be an optical audio output. With her Dell Inspiron she has no choice but to use the headphone/speaker out and then convert it (A>D) to optical to isolate the notebook power supply and eliminate the 60 cycle hum.
All of her gear is pro audio stuff but there are no optical audio inputs so even with a new notebook she'd have to convert the optical out back to analog, but it would eliminate one box and hopefully the A>D conversion inside the new notebook would be better than the external box she's using now (if that's even an issue). If nothing else, it's less clutter and fewer wires -- which means fewer potential failures.
shut down all processes other than what you need to run your karaoke program. Shut down antivirus software. Does her computer have usb ports. on one of those ports you can put an external soundcard and disable the onboard one, freeing up resources. I use a behringer u-control sound card and it works great in eliminating humm.
Thanks Dan.DanG2006 wrote:shut down all processes other than what you need to run your karaoke program. Shut down antivirus software. Does her computer have usb ports. on one of those ports you can put an external soundcard and disable the onboard one, freeing up resources. I use a behringer u-control sound card and it works great in eliminating humm.
My wife says she has shut down everything that's not necessary.
It does have USB 1.1 ports, and we have a PCMCIA card that provides 2 USB 2.0 ports. She uses one for the external drive and the other for audio out to a Behringer card. I'm not sure if it's identical to yours, our main concern was converting A>D to eliminate the hum. I can check into whether she's got the internal sound card disabled, I'm not sure, but I'd guess no. It would be nice if disabling the internal card would solve her problem but I'm doubtful. I can't imagine that the sound card uses a lot of resources.
She says that she can do a search for the next song while people are singing, but she can't click on anything until the current song is over or the video will skip, and maybe the audio too.
I appreciate you trying to save me some money but at this point I'm thinking that we got our money out of the Dell Inspiron (it was my notebook for years before she began using it). I don't want to spend $1,000+ on a new one, but $600 or $700 would be ok -- and the Inspiron could still be her backup notebook.
I'm thinking I'll go to Karafun and other host software mfr sites and see what they recommend as min. hardware requirements and go from there. Find 2 or 3 top-rated notebooks, configure them similarly with well over the min. requirements and compare prices and reliability.
I just thought there might be some folks doing karaoke gigs that would have already discovered which notebooks are best, but I'm beginning to sense that it doesn't matter much.
Just go to overstock.com and get a refurbished laptop like this Dell Latitude D620. Then dump Karafun and get a real hosting application like JustKaraoke and you will be good to go.
The computer you have now was never any good for karaoke if you had to do all the get-arounds to make anything work.
The title of this thread is the best laptop for karaoke.
You need a laptop with the best internal sound card you can buy.
A good video card with the dual display option. Check it first before you buy it.
A processor with dual core and a little more memory. Use an external hard drive for the music so that won't be an issue. You don't need a giant internal one. Use it for karaoke only so you're not junking it up with nonkaraoke stuff slowing it down.
A mini netbook would work if it had dual video display.
Take your video out from the VGA socket. Don't worry about looking for laptops with RCA or S-video outs. They are very expensive if IF you can find one anymore. Get an (VGA to RCA) adapter to change it to whatever type you need. Like RCA or S-video.
Radio Shack makes an audio ground loop (Hum) eliminator for $16 with RCA ends.
The title of this thread is the best laptop for karaoke.
You need a laptop with the best internal sound card you can buy.
A good video card with the dual display option. Check it first before you buy it.
A processor with dual core and a little more memory. Use an external hard drive for the music so that won't be an issue. You don't need a giant internal one. Use it for karaoke only so you're not junking it up with nonkaraoke stuff slowing it down.
A mini netbook would work if it had dual video display.
Take your video out from the VGA socket. Don't worry about looking for laptops with RCA or S-video outs. They are very expensive if IF you can find one anymore. Get an (VGA to RCA) adapter to change it to whatever type you need. Like RCA or S-video.
Radio Shack makes an audio ground loop (Hum) eliminator for $16 with RCA ends.
My wife and I just looked briefly at JustKaraoke. It looks good and the price ($25) is right. I did notice that one user review said that it won't play CD-Gs. Is that true? I'm assuming that means there is software out there that will allow a person to play CD-Gs in their ordinary optical drive, even if there is no native support for that format, is that right?wiseguy wrote:Just go to overstock.com and get a refurbished laptop like this Dell Latitude D620. Then dump Karafun and get a real hosting application like JustKaraoke and you will be good to go.
Actually, her Inspiron 2650 meets or exceeds all of the hardware requirements, but the processor is at the bare minimum.
What would be example of good sound cards? I'm not set on Dell, but just for example -- on Dell's site they have the following options:Bigdog wrote:The computer you have now was never any good for karaoke if you had to do all the get-arounds to make anything work.
The title of this thread is the best laptop for karaoke.
You need a laptop with the best internal sound card you can buy.
A good video card with the dual display option. Check it first before you buy it.
A processor with dual core and a little more memory. Use an external hard drive for the music so that won't be an issue. You don't need a giant internal one. Use it for karaoke only so you're not junking it up with nonkaraoke stuff slowing it down.
A mini netbook would work if it had dual video display.
Take your video out from the VGA socket. Don't worry about looking for laptops with RCA or S-video outs. They are very expensive if IF you can find one anymore. Get an (VGA to RCA) adapter to change it to whatever type you need. Like RCA or S-video.
Radio Shack makes an audio ground loop (Hum) eliminator for $16 with RCA ends.
1) Hi Def Audio 2.0
2) Sound Blaster X-Fi Hi Def Audio
3) Expresscard Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card (this is external though).
How about video cards -- any in particular?
Any video or audio cards (or notebook mfrs) to stay away from?
A netbook is tempting but I wonder if they typically support dual displays?
Good advice regarding the video out, thanks.
She's already using an external hard drive, with a second one for backup. It seems the min internal HDD size these days is still pretty large -- like 250 GB, so definitely no need to bump that up.
If the RS ground loop eliminator works, that would be great. I'm concerned though that if it's some sort of LF filter it will affect the audio. I don't like the idea of my wife using any more external cards than she needs to, but I'm thinking that if the notebook's analog audio out is noisy she might still be better off using the digital optical out and then converting it D>A to go into the powered mixer.
Thanks for your help.
As far as I'm aware, virtually none of the PC Karaoke programs will play CD+G discs directly, they ONLY play MP3+G in unzipped or zipped format.sajohnson wrote:My wife and I just looked briefly at JustKaraoke. It looks good and the price ($25) is right. I did notice that one user review said that it won't play CD-Gs. Is that true? I'm assuming that means there is software out there that will allow a person to play CD-Gs in their ordinary optical drive, even if there is no native support for that format, is that right?
There is meant to be a plugin for Winamp that allows direct CD+G disc playing, however. Check the plugin section on the Winamp website.
If I understand you correctly, Re. "native support" that you mean the drive doesn't actually support CD+G, then the answer is no!
If your optical drive isn't CD+G compliant, then that's an end of it. It WON'T play CDG discs.
Sandy
I'm using 2 Dells ordered custom. $1500 each. They are loaded but I didn't worry about hard drive size because I'm using external hard drives. I bought the most expensive sound card they offered. The best (most money) video card. I'm running the Pioneer laser songs on hard drive. I needed a big processor and I maxed the memory. 2K. I ran experiments to find out how much power was needed to run them and do everything else without screwing up whatever was playing. It's not the computer that decides the dual display, it's the video card.
The RS thing works great been using it 2-3 years. Never had an issue with ground loop from the audio. 99% of the ground loop issues come from hooking up to the bar TVs. Coax. But that depends on the electrical circuit. You should use some type of coax ground loop thingy too to prevent herring bone interference and hum noise issues. I also use an RF amplifier to feed multiple TVs. MCM Electronics has some of this stuff reasonable.
A netbook would need a video out of some kind. Mind doesn't have one.
The RS thing works great been using it 2-3 years. Never had an issue with ground loop from the audio. 99% of the ground loop issues come from hooking up to the bar TVs. Coax. But that depends on the electrical circuit. You should use some type of coax ground loop thingy too to prevent herring bone interference and hum noise issues. I also use an RF amplifier to feed multiple TVs. MCM Electronics has some of this stuff reasonable.
A netbook would need a video out of some kind. Mind doesn't have one.
I play discs in an external disc drive with Sax & Dottys but I didn't do the set up to know how it does it. I paid a smart guru. There were some issues to get all the discs to play correctly. Some discs with Media Cloque? or other anti pirate stuff were a problem for a while. Even some copied discs on colored media or inferior discs wouldn't play.
I have noticed my disc player is pretty sensative about scratches.
I have noticed my disc player is pretty sensative about scratches.
It's easy to go overboard when building your karaoke laptop. I'm guilty of this myself. I have to have the latest and greatest sound and graphics cards around. The truth is, if your only using the laptop for karaoke you are just wasting money.
The integrated sound card that comes standard in most laptops will work just fine. I don't think you will even notice any difference in your sound with a 24 bit external sound card.
A standard integrated video card with at least 128 MB video ram and extended desktop will display the CDG graphics on the laptop and remote screens just as good as the most powerful graphics card you can buy.
I recently bought my niece a refurbished Dell laptop with audio and video components like I just mentioned. Installed JustKaraoke on it and loaded her CDGs onto the internal hard drive with Power CD+G Burner. I connected it to my professional sound system and it worked and sounded just as good as my expensive laptop.
The integrated sound card that comes standard in most laptops will work just fine. I don't think you will even notice any difference in your sound with a 24 bit external sound card.
A standard integrated video card with at least 128 MB video ram and extended desktop will display the CDG graphics on the laptop and remote screens just as good as the most powerful graphics card you can buy.
I recently bought my niece a refurbished Dell laptop with audio and video components like I just mentioned. Installed JustKaraoke on it and loaded her CDGs onto the internal hard drive with Power CD+G Burner. I connected it to my professional sound system and it worked and sounded just as good as my expensive laptop.
Since we're talking about how everything will sound, I'll relate this story.
A local KJ has a marginal sound system at best. Adds a laptop and everything sounds worse. So he goes back to using discs.
2 reasons.
His system was crap to begin with. Then he added a crap laptop. Probably like every other KJ that thinks they are going to do karaoke as CHEAP as possible.
All the cheap equipment has an accumulative effect ...CRAP SOUND.
Should that really be a surprise???
A local KJ has a marginal sound system at best. Adds a laptop and everything sounds worse. So he goes back to using discs.
2 reasons.
His system was crap to begin with. Then he added a crap laptop. Probably like every other KJ that thinks they are going to do karaoke as CHEAP as possible.
All the cheap equipment has an accumulative effect ...CRAP SOUND.
Should that really be a surprise???
Siglos Professional and Hoster will play discs. Both cost extra money though. I prefer to have an outside player to play outside discs so it does not look like I am copying their disc. The winamp plugin is useless because it is shareware that the creators stopped supporting it so that there is no way of opening up it's full functionality. Works with the same amount of drives as CDRWin.mnementh wrote:As far as I'm aware, virtually none of the PC Karaoke programs will play CD+G discs directly, they ONLY play MP3+G in unzipped or zipped format.sajohnson wrote:My wife and I just looked briefly at JustKaraoke. It looks good and the price ($25) is right. I did notice that one user review said that it won't play CD-Gs. Is that true? I'm assuming that means there is software out there that will allow a person to play CD-Gs in their ordinary optical drive, even if there is no native support for that format, is that right?
There is meant to be a plugin for Winamp that allows direct CD+G disc playing, however. Check the plugin section on the Winamp website.
If I understand you correctly, Re. "native support" that you mean the drive doesn't actually support CD+G, then the answer is no!
If your optical drive isn't CD+G compliant, then that's an end of it. It WON'T play CDG discs.
Sandy
