Rank These Karaoke Manu's

List the karaoke manufacture's in the order in which you feel is best to worst and why you place them where you do....

You are only limited to the brands that are available this is not a SC vs... (pick brand) thread.

I'll post my thoughts later as I don't want to taint the responses, yet.

Also list the manu's that have gone out of business that you wish were still making karaoke... do this as a second list.

So your assignment is:

1. Make a list of karaoke manu's that you prefer from the top to the worst with your reasons why they appear where they do.

2. Make a second list of the manu's you love that aren't in business anymore and why you loved them.

Have Fun! Remember this is not a versus debate just a simple list of your fav's.

1) Sound Choice

2) everyone else, with SGB at the bottom

(Note: as everyone already knows, I'm exclusively SC because my daughter, a professional singer, won't use any other brands!)

I've heard some very good tracks from Chartbusters, Legends, All Hits, Monster Hits and Supercore, SGB has it's share of decent tracks too. I have 2 karaokeasia made in Taiwan country disks that sound very decent musically too. Sorry I can't really rank them.

I don't have any Soundchoice disks yet because they are pretty expensive. Based on everything I've read I need to get some of the Foundation packs, but it's a lot of money and I'm just going to have to wait a while.

Some recordings from each company are good and some aren't that good. I'm in the process of trying to build a decent collection of disks so I can start hosting and it's a daunting task. There is a a lot to know and it's expensive. I don't know if that helps at all?

I don't have any Soundchoice disks yet because they are pretty expensive. Based on everything I've read I need to get some of the Foundation packs, but it's a lot of money and I'm just going to have to wait a while.



The "Club Membership" ($25) is a really great deal because they give you a 10-track custom CDG, plus (for one year) you'll save 10% on the Foundation and Brick or Mortar paks. Free shipping too!

For example: 450-song Foundation ($384) is only $348 with club membership. That's 75 cents per song.

Same thing with Bricks: $110 each , only $99 apiece on the club.

Mortar is normally $199, but is $179 with Club. (you get a dozen of YOUR CHOICE of the 15-track Spotlight Discs with a regular price of $23 apiece, or approximately 180 songs for a buck apiece).

75 cents to $1 per song is not really "expensive" when you carefully build your titles from the ground up, with almost NO duplication of tracks!

Buying cheap CDG's to pad your library, in the long run is MORE expensive.

The same way most DJs buy cheap mixers and replace them 3x in 10 years, instead of buying Rane mixers for 3x the price and having them last for 16 years!

I second the SC Club. (Which reminds me, it's time to renew. :D)

Back to our originally scheduled thread.... I'll just rank the manufacturers I have in my catalog.

1) Sound Choice (SC) - Sometimes the display lyrics are wrong & the versions can be a little quirky, but overall they have the best production quality and are pretty dang dead-on to the original. The depth and breadth of their catalog is unmatched (even with so many discontinued CDGs).

2) Chartbuster (CB) - Their rock & pop versions don't quite measure up to SC, but their country releases are among the best produced. They also sometimes come up with a song or two you never thought anyone would produce.

3) Panorama (THM) - Their production quality doesn't always match SC, and they've missed the mark recently with their song selection (at least to me), but they still crank out the latest hits every month. And they distribute in MP3+g, which is always a bonus for me.

4) DK Karaoke (DKK) - The midi melody following the vocals is annoying, but the original karaoke producer was more hit than miss with their versions. (I wish I owned more than one CDG. *Sigh*)

5) Singing Machine (SM) is actually under-rated IMHO; their Motown Originals series is great and they have the best selection of 90's alternative songs with really good quality.

From there, they sort of get lumped together a little.

- The original Pioneer laser karaoke & CDGs were great, but long gone.

- Sing It Now has good versions and decent quality, but they're only releasing CDGs quarterly now & most songs are available from other manufacturers.

- All Hits were good quality & had some songs you didn't find anywhere else, but also gone.

- Backstage/Standing Ovation have a few decent versions, but most are just OK and some are flat-out stinkers. Ditto Legend Karaoke, Dangerous (gone, but some great obscure stuff in their catalog), Music Maestro (gone, but good for their parody/humor selection) and Top Tunes (gone - but their selection & quality of 90's/00's rock songs was great).

- Just Tracks and Pocket Songs/Priddis have good production quality & selection of songs from musicals, but the rest of their catalog doesn't match in quality.

- Zoom is hit-or-miss for quality, but better than Legend.

- Sunfly is good if you want some obscure European pop hits, but they're also very obviously midi productions.

- Sweet Georgia Brown is more miss than hit, but a few of their songs are dead on good.

- Nikkodo's SAV collection isn't great, but it's OK - their song versions are just a little off. It isn't the quality

- Monster is OK but you can get better versions of almost their entire catalog.

- All Star Karaoke: see Monster.

- RadioStarz have some good obscure stuff, otherwise... see Monster.

- Nikkodo's SAV collection isn't great, but it's OK - their song versions are just a little off. It isn't the quality


Yes but thier massive 200 laserdisk japanese set is considered the standard for Japanese karaoke. Great music, and some halfway decent video production. Some of the background videos are hilarious.

Oh, yeah. I totally agree with you there, Toq. I just don't have them in my catalog. :) (I don't have any Pioneer laser, either, but the guy I used to work for did, so I kinda included them.)

For POP: Zoom, if not avail, then MAYBE SC, depending on track, DK, then SuperCore, All Hits, Monster then others. Legends DOES have some pretty good tracks.

For COUNTRY: Chartbuster, then Top Hits


For OLDIES: Music Maestro ( Also for DUETS), and Lost Classics


For HIP HOP/RAP Motown Original Artists


For LATIN Tropical Zone


For HARD TO FIND SONGS SGB is very helpful. BTW- IMHO, the BEST versions of Son Of A Preacher Man and War Pigs, as well as others.

I won't go into what I call "frisbees". No reason to bash. Backstage is at the bottom of my acceptable list, but only because of just a few discs. ( Eagles, for instance, and the Neil Diamond disc is excellent)

I'm a little divided on this issue.

My favourite used to be sound choice because MOST of the time they were to the truest to the original song, and they use real istruments. Eg.. if they song called for a hammond digital organ *those things are worth about 100,000 dollars now since they stopped making them in the 60's* then that's what they use.

However with their past preformance/policies on the way they treat digital karaoke they have dropped considerably in my list. The other thing I dislike about them is they use REALLY REALLy cheap media. The other thing I hate is that they have discontinued about 80% of their Spotlight series discs, making the discs that I have irreplaceable despite their replacement policy.


My new favourite is Zoom entertainment. They are an excellent quality, you can get some really obscure singers and the background singers are usually spot on.

The other thing that impressed me is they think of the smaller details.. For example their Platinum Artist disc of the Everly Brothers not only includes tracks that most manufacturers don't have, they include a karaoke track with and without a background singer.. This way you can sing all of their popular songs by yourself with the backgrounds vocals to sing the song the way it was meant to be sung or you can sing it with a friend or friends to get the same effect.

Also you can get almost all of their discs in a per track format on Triceresoft's webpage.

My second favourite is Chartbusters mostly because there essentials 450 packs have a wider variety of songs AND they don't make any duplicate songs *that's a REALLY big plus in my book*. I also think the quality is decent

My third choice is a canadian disc manu called Sing King featuring Canadian only artists. The qaulity ROCKS and is in my opinion ever BETTER than soundchoice.

My Fourth choice would be Karaokemaker another Canadian Manufacturer. They also feature canadian bands and are decent quality.. The reason they are fourth however is because my most requested disc TROOPER was stolen when i was in the washroom and I can't replace it because it has been discontinued.. *grr* They said the liscensing got too expensive, which i can believe because not one other manufactuer has ever done any of their songs.

My Fifth Choice is another obscure Canadian manufacturer called Gamesman. They feature some very hard to find tracks including the only place you get get a rendition of "Too Bad" by Doug & The slugs... And as a coincidence they actually managed to get the lead guitar player from the band to do the music for the karaoke tracks.

and finally the last series I use extensively is Legends. The quality is hit and miss, but when it's good it's DAMNED good and they also have a very extensive list of artists including the most extensive list of Kinks songs that I have seen *altho their version of 'come dancing' is TERRIBLE.*

I have the entire SAVP collection, which has a lot of beatles songs that aren't available on any other series, and a few other songs that are the same.

i have a few Backstage discs, which I happen to like. I also have some sweet georgia brown that i think is decent quality.

I just wish their Weird al disc didn't have all the applause in the background, its VERY irratating..


Now manufacturers that I wish were still making their discs.

1. Dangerous.. The only series to have several songs that I sing, and sadly aren't available anywhere else.

I bought a second-hand set of these discs on Ebay, only to find out that they were pirated.. *sigh*

3. DKK millenium series.. Sure the quality of the music was hit and miss but I think it was the most complete series ever made, and also has songs that no one else has made yet.

I get a lot of requests for "Wasn't that a party" even tho a version for the Irish Rovers doesn't exist on karaoke.

that's my list

-James