Next to the sound absorption panels, the Debrox was even more dramatic, much more dramatic that upgrading the CD Player or anything like that. Sometimes we’re out there chasing the newest gear when in fact the solution is right there at the Drugstore for $6.99.

Debrox was easy to use for me, with my hard ear wax.. took many days of repetition, but now I can hear better out of one ear than the other because it did such a fantastic job. My ear has never been this clean in my life!!!!

Try it you won’t regret it.

I happened upon a Rega Brio 2000 New Old Stock (NOS), and snapped it up immediately at $375CAD shipped. The price is fair and good, especially given the performance of the model. The main downside with the Brio is of course the lack of a remote control. Another possible downside, depending on your speakers and room size is the relatively low power of 38 Watts/Channel.

I hooked the Rega Brio 2000 to my Jungson Beauty Deity BD-1 speakers, because these are the speakers that I am giving to my father to use with his new Rega gear (I also snagged a Planet 2000 for him). I was a bit concerned about the somewhat low efficiency (86db) of the Jungsons, and how the 38 watts/ch of the Rega would handle it, but my fears were unnecessary.. the Brio 2000 sounded amazing with the Jungsons! There was tons of midrange detail with fantastic attack. Voices were extremely musical and rich with that inner detail that I’ve always appreciated with Rega. The sound was somewhat warmer than the sound with the Creek 4430SE that I had, and the sound is MUCH better than my Yulong Amp. In fact, I want to sell my Yulong and buy another Rega for myself now!

The Brio 2000 has double knobs on the front, one for volume and one for source selection. The source selector knob is kind of sticky-feeling, and not that clicky. Its not a bad thing, just not what I expected.

The back has non-gold plated RCAs, and 5-way Binding posts for the speakers. Detachable IEC power cord is nice, and the extruded aluminum case is built very well. The front fascia is plastic, as with most of the Rega components. I believe some of the higher end ones are aluminum.

The Brio also includes what some say is a legendary phono stage, but I did not try it out. I didn’t want to lug my turntable into my den in order to test the phono stage. But there are plenty of online reviews that attest to it’s superiority.

Overall the Rega Brio is an excellent amp, and given the modest $375CAD Shipped New price, I don’t think I could have found something better for less. Indeed it is a minimalist amp with no remote, and only two knobs and a button on the front, but it excels in midrange, rhythm and pace. I’m also confident that my father will be extremely happy with it!

I picked up this LP along with a few others at Audiopile on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. The owner there (or at least who I THINK is the owner) is a really cool guy, and the prices on the new LPs are pretty good. Additionally, he has a great used Jazz section and a great used pop/rock section as well. I picked up a couple of used records and a few new ones, and the used ones were in NEW shape, and its quite possible they had never even been played. Very nice. He also has a “Spend $100 and get $10 back to spend” deal!

The subject of this post, however, is my GnR Use Your Illusion 1 album. I’ve been considering purchasing this album for quite a while, as I have always considered November Rain and Don’t Cry two of the best Rock Balads ever written. Yes, Axel is a genuis. The album was $28, so it was a bit steep, but I figured that since its two 180g LPs, and November rain was on an outside track, that the quality would probaby be good. Not to mention that it came with a free MP3 album download.

I popped it on my Pro-Ject 2Xperience turntable with the Ortofon Kontrapunkt A cartridge and it sounded AMAZING. November Rain was meant to be listed to like this… there simply is no other way to experience this song. The detail and depth to the soundstage is phenomenal, and it has a presence to it that the CD is simply lacking. I’ve always liked the CD version, but this is so much of an easier-going version of the song, and sounds fantastic. If you are a GnR fan and are into vinyl, this is a must-get album.

The Kontrapunkt A is a low-output, moving coil cartridge with a nude fine line stylus with aluminum cantilever. The nude fine line cartridge makes a huge difference especially tracking on the inner grooves, producing none of the strange acoustics that sometimes are evident in lesser stylii.

I upgraded from a Grado Sonata Moving iron cartridge that has a elliptical stylus, which while still being very good, did not track quite as well.

The Kontrapunkt A has the most amazing bass of any cartridge I have owned, but also keep in mind that it is the highest end cartridge that I have owned, and the only Moving Coil I’ve owned. I have heard many moving coils in my time, however, with many of them sounding a bit brittle and hyper detailed. These were cheaper MC carts, however. The Bass with this cartridge is phenomenal to me, very articulated and low, with none of that muddiness that is common with the cheaper cartridges I have heard. Nor is the cartridge thin-sounding like the OM series of Ortofons that turned me off the brand early in my listening career.

The midrange on the Kontrapunkt A is also very impressive, with a good musicality to it, without any hard edge to it. This is not too surprising however given that it is vinyl. The midrange is true, and female and male vocals are both very impressive in reproduction.

Treble is airy, and liquid, just like it should be. No rounded off treble like I have noted with previous catridges that I have owned. The treble is one of the things I have noticed about MC cartridges in the past… it is more detailed. This Ortofon is no exception.

Bottom line, I really love this cart, and I still have my Grado Sonata as a backup, but the Kontrpunkt A remains on the tonearm.

Audio System:
Gershman Acoustics X-Cube Speakers
Odyssey Extreme Monoblock Amplifiers
Linar Pre-2 Preamplifier
Bel Canto CD-1 CD Player
Pro-Ject Xpression 2 Turntable
Ortofon Kontrapunkt A Cartridge
Pro-Ject Speed Box II
Pro-Ject Phono Box SE
Monster Power HTPS 7000 Power Conditioner
Furutech eTP60 Power Conditioner

As you can see, the lacquer finish on the wood veneer is beautifully done, with thick solid cases, weighing almost 30lbs per speaker. Not bad given that they are 6.5″ woofers i a two way bass reflex design. I also picked up the custom stands which are very good, and match the speakers perfectly.

Trebles are extended, but not too much so, with a lush full bass that is not too boomy, as I experienced with the Aurum Cantus Leisure II SE’s. These speakers are a bit harder to drive, and require a decent amp. Specs recommend 20-200W, but I am feeling that they do better around 75W+. I felt they were performing best with the Jungson Amplifier that pumped out 120W, as weaker amps can sound thin.

The tweeter and driver on these speakers are from Morel, and a perfectly matched. Not for a second is this speaker fatiguing to listen to, quite the contrary I find it very engaging and realistic in it’s presentation of the female and male vocals, especially. Again I have to comment on the Bass.. it is extremely detailed and tight for such a small speaker.

5 way binding posts on the back are quality, and the overall construction completely belies its cost. It still blows my mind how good the stuff out of China is for the money. Not that everything from China claiming to be HI-FI is great, but I would have to say most of it is very impressive, and none of it is poor value. Jungson is a company worth taking a look at. These speakers won’t replace your Sonus Faber, but they will give them a run for their money!

Specs:
Frequency Range: 40hz – 30khz
Impedence: 8ohms
Efficiency: 85db
Weight: 13kg/speaker

Finally we are back to talking about gear again. I enjoy gear much more than software, as for me, software is a means to an end, while gear is just cool!

The other two main peices of gear you are going to need to complete your system is a Mixer and Microphones. I’ll talk about speakers later, but I am assuming that you already have an amp, tv and speakers, and are just integrating a karaoke system into your existing home theatre system. It would be a bigger article to talk about setting everything up and making purchasing decisions for all of them. I am using a ceiling mounted front-projector for my karaoke setup, with a 105″ homemade screen – gotta save those pennies in these trying economic times!

Mixers
Choosing a Mixer is going to be a bit more easy than choosing a Microphone because there is a less drastic effect on the sound, and any decent mixer will give you good results. The important thing with the mixer is you will want at least 6 channels, with two of the channels designed as stereo CD/AUX inputs for the karaoke machine. The other 4 will be for microphones. If you think you’ll only ever need 2 microphones, a 4 channel mixer will suffice, though there aren’t too many with that few channels around.

The other feature you will want is mixer effects built in so you don’t have to purchase a separate effects processor. This will save you a couple hundred dollars, because you will want to be able to add a bit of karaoke echo to your vocals. If you plan to use a condenser Microphone for vocals in the future, make sure the mixer you choose has phantom power. Most professional mixers do have phantom power.

The unit that I settled on was the Yamaha MG82cx. I chose this mixer because Yamaha mixers have very good sound quality at a price you can’t beat. It also has 8 channels which is perfect, with a built in effects processor that can be adjusted for each channel individually. It also has high/mid/low equalizers for all the microphone channels, which allows you to do some minor vocal shaping to make your vocals sound better.

Because this is a professional mixer, you will want to use balanced microphone cables rather than the unbalanced 1/4″ plugs that come with karaoke mics. It will not sound right unless you used balanced XLR cables. Another feature of this mixer is the sub 80hz filter. It allows you to filter out low sounds from the microphone channels which significantly reduces microphone handling noise and slightly reduced pop as well.

When adjusting the mixer for the first time, it is hard to get all the settings right, but essentially how it works is every channel has individual gain and volume, and then there is an overall volume for the mixed (microphone + karaoke music) signal as well.

Here is a break-down diagram out how this will be hooked up:

The types of cables you need to hook the mixer up to your gear will depend on the type of mixer you buy. You will probably need at least one pair of 1/4″ TRS to RCA adapter cables since most mixers do not have RCA outputs. They will usually have one pair of RCA inputs, however. The Yamaha requires one pair of 1/4″ to RCA adapters.

Microphones

I’m not that knowledgeable with Microphones, but I do know that Vocal Condensor microphones sound really good, and a bit more natural than dynamic mics. I found after more expensive Microphones, the cheaper ones sounded sort of tinny, and less natural, especially at higher gain.

I ended up purchasing an Electrovoice Cobalt EV-7 and EV-9, one of which is a dynamic microphone and one which is a condensor. Both sound very good, and far better than the freebie microphones that come with consumer grade karaoke equipment.

You will have to buy and try your own microphones in order to determine what you want. Do remember to buy the balanced XLR cables to hook your mic up to the Mixer. You’ll also want to make sure you have a good pair of speakers that can really handle a lot of volume, and sound good while doing it. Some major Consumer brands that produce decent stuff would be Klipsch, Paradigm, PSB, Athena, Energy and Definitive Technology. A subwoofer wouldn’t hurt either.

So now, you should be all set to hook up your system and get rocking! Hope you enjoyed the series.

In part 3 of this series of articles, I’m going to show you the process I used to create a Songbook using the files generated by the software we used in Part 2. Additionally you will need a Spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel, and a fairly sophisticated text editor such as Ultraedit. The Text Editor is useful for doing block editing that you will need to insert the song numbers back into the files. This isn’t really needed the first time you make songs, but if you are adding songs after your first batch, this may become useful – though there are ways around it. The Spreadsheet program (Microsoft Excel) is useful because it will allow you to order the songs in any way you would like: By artist, by song title, or by song number.

Parsing the Raw Text File
Once you’ve converted all the MP3+G files into MCG’s, there should be a text file that was created. It will share the same name as the folder that you that you created the files in. This will be your alphabetical song list. In your subfolder where the MCG files were created, there will be a Juke.txt file, which will give you the song numbers that you will need in order to create your songbook. These files need to be merged in order to create your song book.

You will need to grab the column of song numbers from the Juke.txt file using a block or column editing mode in your text editor, and insert it in the beginning of the text file generated by MP3+G Toolz. Now you will have all your songs in a list with the corresponding song numbers. After this, you need to use search/replace to try and insert commas between each of the three elements: Song Number, Song Name, and Artist Name. The only commas that should exist in this text file are the ones separating these elements on each line. Each line should look something like this:

“1234,Summer of 69,Bryan Adams”

Where:
1234 = The Song Number
Summer of 69 = The Song Name
Bryan Adams = The Artist

Creating and Organizing the Song Book
Once you have done all that, change the file extension on the text document to .CSV and open the file in Microsoft Excel. Changing the file extension to .CSV identifies the file as a Comma Separated Values file, and will allow Microsoft Excel to recognize it. Each of your elements should now be in their own column. You can use Excel to alphebetize or organize it however you like, and then print it to create your songbook.

Excel uses very simply column organizing commands that will let you order all the data based on any of the columns. You simply click on the column you with to organize by, and the select-all (CTRL-A) and the choose “order by” and the method you wish to order it by.

If you are adding additional songs you will also need to recreate your INX file so that your CAVS player can read the song list as well, and the process is somewhat more complicated, but still manageable so long as you have all the programs here.

In Part 4, I’ll start talking abou gear again. I’ll go over the Microphones and Mixers you can use.

In this next installment of my Karaoke system building, I will talk about how I got the songs onto the AcomData harddrive and made them work with my CAVS 203G USB karaoke machine. This part is one of the more technical and computery parts of this series of articles, and a little bit less gearhead. I feel that even if you buy a whole bunch of SCD+G’s you can find, there are always some songs that are going to be missing which you will have to track down and learn to add to a flash drive or USB harddrive if you want them – or perhaps burn your own Super CD+G’s.

I didn’t try to burn a SCD+G, however the process is much the same as I will be outlining here, but you will have to encode the files to a SCD+G format afterwards. I’ll also go through the process of how to create a songbook from the files. It is not the simplest process, but it worked for me.

Downloading and Prepping the Files

You can download your MP3+G files from anywhere. This may not be the most ethical thing to do, but whatever – I’m a poor boy. You can procure them from your local bittorrent site, or limewire, etc. Once you have the files, they will be likely in a series of .ZIP files or a series of .MP3 and .CDG files. Ultimately you want a folder full of .MP3 + .CDG’s. If they are in .ZIP format, you can unzip each and every file, which is time consuming, or install MP3+G Toolz. Once it is installed, you can just right click the folder with all the .ZIP files in it and choose MP3+G Toolz and then select Convert ZIP to Audio+G. Then you will have a folder full of .MP3 and .CDG files

Once you have your folder full of .MP3 and .CDG files, you can commence the MCG file creation process. Ultimately, the new format requires a type of file called an MCG file, which is a combined format that joins the MP3 and the CDG file into one. The extension is still .MP3, however.

For this process, you will need the program IPS Manager. It is available free from the CAVS website. This program is slightly confusing at first, but is quite easy to use once you get the hang of it. Its very poorly designed either way you look at it, however.

What you need this program to do is to generate the Song Titles as stored in the IDv3 tags on the MP3 files as well as number the files for the INX and the filenames themselves – in addition to creating the MCG file itself, of course.

This is what the IPS Manager Program looks like:

The left is where your MP3 + CDG files are located, and the right is where you want the new MCG files to be created. I suggest simply creating a subfolder where the MP3 + CDG files are for that.

On the left pane, you need to navigate to where your MP3 + CDG files are, and then click the checkbox: Check All. After that you click on “INDEX-TITLE” and then select the “Auto : Start No.” Radio button and enter “1″ into the box. This tells the program that you are starting at the beginning. If you were adding additional songs then you would enter the next number in your series of songs, but this should be your first time, or you wouldn’t be reading this

In the section below, you want to click on the radio “Use File Name as Title“, then click “OK”. This should title all your MP3 files and also index them. Now you can begin the encoding process. Click “ENCODE” and make sure the “Create ENGLISH.INX” radio is clicked. You will need this file to navigate through your files easily. The encode process will go on for a while, depending on how many songs you have.

Copying your files to the Harddrive
Once it is finished, all you need to do is create a folder on the Harddrive you are hooking up to your CAVS 203G USB karaoke machine and copy all the files created by IPS Manager into it, including the ENGLISH.INX file. You MUST create a subfolder on the harddrive, and not copy them directly onto the harddrive as for some reason, the player will not run the ENGLISH.INX index file if it is in the root of the harddrive. I called my subfolder “Karaoke”

Now all that’s left is to turn on your CAVS player and plug in the drive and wait for it to load!

If you are adding songs to an existing batch, it is a bit more complicated as you will need to start the indexing number where you left off, and download the INX Maker program from CAVS in order to generate a new INX file from your Juke.txt files. If you need help with this, you can email me.

NOTE: My player has difficulty starting up if I have the drive plugged in when I turn it on, so I have to plug it in after the player has booted up. You may have the same problem.

In Part 3, I will discuss creating a songbook using the files generated in this process!

I decided I was going to set up a Karaoke system in my house, and noticed that a lot of guys out there that had people set up theirs professionally had mixers and professional microphones hooked up instead of using the built-in Microphone inputs typically found in Karaoke machines. I found it really difficult to find the information I needed to put together something decent. What I did know was that I needed a Pro Audio Mixer at least to get decent Microphone preamplification in addition to whatever type of Karaoke Source machine I used. So that’s where I started.

The number of Karaoke Source machines out there is infinite, as are the number of Mixers! Especially when you don’t really have a clear idea of what you are looking for. The problem with mixers as well is that they do not always have Key Control and Reverb (echo) Effects, which are used commonly in Karaoke. The problem with Karaoke Sources is that if you go CD+G, you have to build up a big library at considerable cost. If you go with a Karaoke PC, you have to spend a lot of money right from the get-go, but you get a lot of music that you can add to quite affordably. There’s always Midi Karaoke as well, but if you are going to go this far to build your system, you probably want a high quality Karaoke Source to go along with it.

I decided after a lot of back and forth to get the Karaoke Player first, and worry about the microphone amplification afterwards.

Karaoke Player Source Machine and Format
After checking out the commerically available sources, and seeing a lot of the chinese knock-off Karaoke song machines out there, I decided I would stick with the SCD+G or SUPER CD+G format. This format is good because it is essentially a MP3 and a CDG files for the text or graphics.

Super CD+G discs are very easy to purchase at the cost of around $80-120 for a disc containing approximately 400-1200 songs. The other option is to burn your own home made Super CD+G’s with downloaded MP3+G files. I will talk about that process later.

The only machine out there that offered a robust build, affordability and the ability to add a USB Harddrive or Flashdrive was the CAVS 203G USB. The 103G USB was an inferior unit, with a more fragile build, and didn’t cost much less, so I chose the 203G. This player allows you to connect a USB Harddrive to it, as long as it is formatted in FAT32 format. The player costs around $225 or so without the harddrive and even includes a decent free microphone.

I tried both using a Flash Drive and a USB Harddrive with my 203G USB, and they work great. I have had the odd crash while using it, but this happens infrequently, and in home use is not a big deal. Remember to purchase the USB version if you wish to download your own songs and put them on a harddrive, which costs about $100 for 160gigs. The standard 203G only accepts CDs and DVDs and has no USB input.

The harddrive I purchased was the Acomdata Hybrid Drive 160gig, but you can use just about any drive out there. I chose this drive due to cost and the fact that it was already formatted in a FAT32 format. This makes life easier for me.

NOTE: I have since discovered that this harddrive does not work on a friend’s 203G USB system in another house, causing crashes shortly after playing one song. It may require the additional power supply to work. I am in the process of testing additional units out, and will publish them here when I find a solid unit.

This player also has two microphone inputs if you do not wish to use a mixer with your set up.. however, having tried a mixer, I wouldn’t do it any other way.. stay tuned for part 2 of this article where I’ll talk about the programs I used to create the song format for the USB Harddrive as well as creating a Songbook to pick your music.

Go to Part 2.