Scan & Fix 50 registry issues FREEKarma
Full user review
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"Karaoke Software, Not Ready for Prime Time"
Pros
Many good features for karaoke hosts. Singer queuqe distinct from playlist queue. CDG adjustment capability. Reads the media files and creates catalog quickly! Adjustable font size to make the type bigger! Big time-remaining clock.
Cons
CPU hog! Commands to add songs go unanswered. Sometimes plays the words to one song and music to another! All fonts in every window must be the same size. Some controls at top of screen while others are at the bottom. Word screen not enlargable.
Summary
This software package has had a lot of thought go into it before design. I predict that future versions of this software will be very popular. However, after using the product for about two hours I found a number of problems with it.
The product is a CPU hog! Granted I don't use the fastest CPU but my 1.73 Ghz Pentium running XP, has run numerous other Karaoke software with no problems. This product gets so busy it does not respond to commands, like add a new song to a singer. It does not tell you the the command could not be carried out, it does not queue the command to execute later, it simply ignores it. A beginner KJ I watched played the wrong song and had to stop and find the right song, about 5 times in the 3 hours I was there. I now think it was software related.
Using the "Next" and "NS" buttons I was able to get the software to play one song's music and show another song's lyrics on the screen at the same time! I would have to sit down and think about how to write the software to make that happen on purpose! That might bring some levity to the show but I don't think it would inspire confidence in the singers if they were to see that!
The program allows you to make the fonts bigger which is great! However, the column headings must loose some characters to do that. It would be nice if the column headings could be locked while the data font could be enlarged.
The controls for volume, mute, CDG synch and pitch are at the top of the screen while the controls for EQ, tempo, fades and Master volume are loaded in a screen at the bottom that can be hidden. It would be nice to have all those controls in the same place.
I someimes use my karaoke system to do gigs for dance parties where I am the only singer. I do not hook up a second screen, I just make the screen bigger so I can see it when I am standing. I could not find a way to make the screen take up half the screen like I am used to. I would have to bring a second monitor to use this software.
I lowered the pitch of a song by 3 steps and compared the sound quality between Karma and Winamp. Winamp sounded much better. In Karma I would hear a warbeling sound on the electric piano sounds while Winamp had a good quality lowered that much.
There were a couple of features that I could not figure out how I would use is a Karaoke show. One was the VU Meter like bars at the top of the screen and the other was the sound wave representation with song position/ending at the bottom of the page. I can't think why I would want to look at the sound wave and stop a song part way through. I am sure this eats up some of that 100% CPU usage.
All in all I think the software has the potential to become a really great product. It still has some real bugs that need to be worked out before I use it in front of a crowd, and some features that will take some getting used to if I decide to use it.
