Find a song with multiple channels

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HowardBrazee
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Find a song with multiple channels

Post by HowardBrazee »

It would be fun to get a song with multiple channels and see how that works (It would be *great* if that was a song like Kyu Sakamoto's "Ue o muite aruko ("Keep your head up and walk")", better known as Sukiyaki in the U.S.).

Or some familiar song like a standard would work.

Any suggestions where I can find one?

Thanks.

DeusExMachina
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by DeusExMachina »

What do you mean by multiple channels. kJams already does this to an extent, for multiplexed tracks.

HowardBrazee
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by HowardBrazee »

I don't think I have any songs with multiplexed tracks. I see that kJams can play a bunch of channels, so I wanted to buy a song that uses multiple channels. Just out of curiosity.

I have a CD-G disk that has the same songs listed twice, once with quiet singing and once without. It would be neat to rip them together as 2 channel songs. Or have two different languages. I am curious how this is implemented.

dave
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by dave »

kJams can choose GRAPHICS channels, not AUDIO channels. there are probably like five CD+G discs in the world that took advantage of graphics channels.

DeusExMachina
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by DeusExMachina »

Dave, I think he is referring to right, left, and center audio channels on multiplexed disks.

DeusExMachina
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by DeusExMachina »

Howard
If I am right and you are referring to multiplex disks, the fact that your disks have two versions, one with vocals and one without implies they are NOT multiplex.
You could do what you want by importing the audio from both versions into an app like Audacity, flattening both from stereo to mono (if necessary) and then combining the two resulting mono tracks into a single stereo track, with one channel having the vocal and the other without. Remix to stereo, with one track set to the right channel and the other to the left, and then just export that track, place it in the same folder as one of the CDGs, renaming as necessary to ensure both files have the same name, and zipping together if necessary.
This might be a bit tedious for an entire library, especially since few people will probably ever use the tracks with guide vocals, but it would work just fine.
Last edited by DeusExMachina on Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dave
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by dave »

:shock:

HowardBrazee
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by HowardBrazee »

I see that Karaoke Version lets me download songs I bought in the following formats:

Color background WMV, MP4, KFN (Interactive Karaoke)
Black background WMV, MP4, MP3+CDG (Advanced users)

In testing, I don't seem to be able to load KFN, and MP4 are the best looking. I don't know why MP3+CDG are for advanced users. Is it possible to combine some of these versions into one multiple channel song?

DeusExMachina
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by DeusExMachina »

KFN is a proprietary format from KaraFun. Eh.
Calling it "interactive" is a bit of a stretch.
Why would you want to combine versions? The audio track is the same for all versions, and MP3+G is going to be low res no matter what you do. You gain nothing by combining these features.

HowardBrazee
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by HowardBrazee »

Their descriptions "Advanced users", "Interactive Karaoke" didn't mean anything to me when downloading them and trying them on kJams.

It looks to me that I would always want their MP4 version, I don't see reasons for the others (I could be missing them). But for the fun of it, I'd like to play with the multiple channel feature of kJams, and wondered if there was a way to do it with these.

DeusExMachina
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Re: Find a song with multiple channels

Post by DeusExMachina »

KFN really just allows for a few track selections, and is not the same thing that kJams is doing.
kJams is supporting an industry standard called multiplexing, whereby the vocal track is mixed into the very center of a single stereo track, and the rest of the music is mixed slightly out of phase on the left and right. As a result, using a little bit of acoustic physics, if you invert one side of the stereo track, say the right side channel, and then remix, anything that is the same in both tracks, a/k/a the center, drops out, leaving just the far right and far left, in this case the music without vocals.
Alternatively, some do the same thing by mixing vocals all on one side of a stereo track (say all vocals on the right) and mixing all the backing music to the other side. So dropping the vocal side of a stereo mix leaves you with just the backing music in mono.

This is not the same thing as having multiple tracks, like you see in KFN.

I've advocated for this for a few reasons, but as of now, KaraFun is the only player that supports this, KFN is NOT a major player in the karaoke world, and there is little push to implement it in kJams other than to play around with it, since again, other than KaraFun, there isn't even any content available that would support the feature.

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