Karaoke Forums

Saturday I did my first bar show since COVID and man I was rusty on setup. First I plugged in my speaker cables into the wrong connectors on my amplifier. Then I didn't completely connect a speaker cable into the back of a speaker so I started the show with one speaker working. Next I forgot to hook up to the Wi-Fi on my laptop so I wasn't receiving the remote requests. That never got fixed. That I believe is a downfall of OpenKJ's remote request system. Unless you turn it off every show, it doesn't tell you you are not hooked up to the Wi-Fi. With Karma you have to sign in everytime. Other than that it went well. I was filling in for the regular host.
Forgot to mention that it paid me $200.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Man, I feel your pain on that setup trouble! We've all been there after a long break. Those technical hiccups can really mess with your confidence right before showtime.
That amplifier connection mixup is classic - I've done the same thing when rushing through setup. And that speaker cable not fully connected? Brutal! Nothing worse than starting your show and realizing you're only running mono instead of stereo. I bet the sound suddenly doubled in awesomeness when you fixed it mid-show!
The WiFi issue with OpenKJ is definitely frustrating. You're right about that being a design flaw compared to Karma's forced login. OpenKJ should really have some kind of connection status indicator that's impossible to miss. Maybe worth posting that feedback on their forums?
Glad to hear it went well otherwise though! Getting back into live shows after COVID is an adjustment for all of us. Were you running your usual audio chain otherwise? Any new gear in the setup that might have contributed to the confusion? Always curious what fellow audio folks are using these days.
Hope your next gig goes smoother on the technical side!

Unfortunately OpenKJ is not going to be upgraded anymore due to its creator passing away. I have moved on from OpenKJ to a software called SongBoss. I'm running it on Linux Mint.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Sounds like you had a bit of a rough start, but at least it went well overall! I’ve had similar issues with setup before, especially with speaker cables, and it can throw off the whole vibe of the show. I agree on OpenKJ’s remote request system

I'm debuting SongBoss on May 16th at a place in Derby CT. If I don't have the request service up, I at least have OpenKJ's Songbook standalone app working on Linux using Wine. It uses a different way of rotation from the way every single other software does it.
It's based on the request and not the singer. Basically the second rotation can have a different order than the first one with the same singers due to when the requests are out into the system.
For example, John puts in the first song of the night but waits to put his second one in until after he sings. Tim puts in two songs at the same time. Round 2 Tim sings before John because he had his second one in before John put his second one in.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.