WHAT IS DIGITAL FORMAT KARAOKE? Brew City Music ...

You see it all too often ... KJ's fumbling around with discs, wasting time between songs searching, loading, cueing, and all too often loading the wrong songs, that skip-skip-skip from scratched discs, bad on-screen lyrics ...

You hear it all the time ... The thin, harsh sound that's either too loud and annoying or unintelligible coming out of those good 'ol fashioned "Speakers on Sticks", the feedback, the sonic fatigue setting in as the night goes on...

Let's face it - the average Karaoke Show leaves a lot to be desired. No matter how good your singers are, without a trained hand (and ears) at the controls, without the right sound processing equipment, without top quality, well-maintained professional sound gear, and without a professionally trained entertainer hosting the show ... Well, what's left is 99% of the Karaoke available today. Which is what BREW CITY MUSIC is NOT about.

A TESTED BLEND of STUDIO and LIVE SOUND like NO OTHER .... BREW CITY MUSIC.

Digital-Format Karaoke is a relatively new concept that has been gaining popularity rapidly on both coasts, as well as in Europe. The concept behind DFK is similar to the ripping and storing of MP3 songs on your home PC or Ipod, with the actual CD+G tracks from Karaoke discs being stored in any one of several available formats that include the on-screen graphics for replay. As with any digital media, the end quality of the digital files is heavily dependant on the amount of compression used when converting the track to digital, and true professional equipment and software is an absolute MUST if the resulting files are to be of true "Studio Quality"...

When a KJ attempts to create a digital show (as more and more are attempting to do) there are several choices that they can make when it comes to the formatting of their song collections or libraries. To save money and drive space, most budget KJ's use the standard MP3+G format, which compresses the audio track into an MP3 file (just like your Ipod) and a seperate cdg file for the lyrics. While this standard does allow a large collection of songs to be stored in very little hard drive space (think roughly 11 to 1) the resulting songs lose between 50 and 80 percent of their initial sound quality, depending on the level of compression used and the bitrate selected... And this loss of quality shows BIG TIME when played through even semi-professional equipment!

Here at BCM, we ONLY rip and store our Karaoke files in full DVD format - while this process is expensive (and very time consuming) it allows us to retain 100% of the original sound quality of the source material, with absolutely no possibility of mistracking, skipping, stuttering, or any of the inherent CD troubles. What this means to you is a sonically perfect, trouble-free performance without the hassles associated with the average Karaoke Show!

CLEAN ACCURATE SOUND KEEPS YOUR CUSTOMERS COMING BACK AND YOUR SINGERS HAPPY LIKE NOBODY ELSE!

Another form of Digital-Format Karaoke is the MIDI type of audio combined with lyric displays in a text format (think of the crappy, beepy, bouncing-ball Karaoke of years past). Recently, several entertainment groups in the Southeast Wisconsin market have begun marketing these shows as true "Karaoke" - NO WAY !!!

Here at BCM we invite all of our perspective customers to visit a show and listen for yourselves - in fact, we also prefer that you visit several of our competitors shows to experience the difference firsthand. In fact, if all you are looking for is something for your customers to do on any given night and professionalism and quality don't really matter to you, click the pirate flag on the left to download a FREE shareware MIDI-KARAOKE program that you can use on any PC in your home or establishment (it's the same FREEWARE program many Lakes-Area KJ's are using to host shows, believe it or not). While MIDI Karaoke can be enjoyable at home as a low-cost alternative to standard CDG Karaoke or DFK, one listen will convince you that it's NOT what you want your customers to remember when they think of your establishment!

It's not neccessarily a problem with CD+G Karaoke (in fact, after the original Pioneer Video-Disc Karaoke evolved into the CD+G format, the industry has been and still is based on CD+G's) - the problem generally also lies with the KJ's production when running a CDG show. CDG players are prone to mistracking or errors when subjected to excessive vibration (such as the ones produced by "Speakers on Sticks" when turned up loud enough to compensate for the loss of bass when you stick a speaker cabinet up in the air) and very few KJ's are willing to spend the time or money neceesary to correct this problem with either quality equipment or proper placement and setup. CDG's are as prone as any other opical disc to damage by scratching, etc. and as a rule of thumb are changed in and out of players several times each evening, resulting in skips, stutters, bad graphics, etc. and even in a situation where KJ's store their discs in multi-disc cartridges where they encounter less handling, over the course of time the source material on the CDG's deteriorates due to general wear. Factor in the lack of experience, sound production, and quality equipment that is the norm for most KJ's and suddenly relying on a CDG-based show to entertain your customers just seems too risky to chance, especially with the prices being charged by so many inexperienced or careless KJ's today.