Karaoke Tool Box
By Ken Wilson
Croaky Entertainment

In the last issue we covered creating KMF files with WinCDG Pro 2.5 from Tyrannosoft. The good folks over there have informed me that they have changed their name to Tricerasoft, and their new website is located at www.tricerasoft.com. They also provided me with a copy of their newest offering, Mimic 2.0, an advanced karaoke player/utility aimed at the serious karaoke enthusiast.

The first difference I noticed between WinCDG Pro and Mimic was the 'skin'. A 'skin' is the graphical interface. The part of the program you look at and interact with. Mimic is a fairly new program so the default skin provided by Tricerasoft is all I had to work with. The big difference was the smaller, compact design in Mimic, compared to the large font 800X600 skin available for WinCDG Pro. In a low light, professional setting, the small fonts and compact size of the default Mimic skin may be a problem. The good news is that you can develop your own skins with the tools provided by Tricerasoft, or you can check the website for uploads from other Mimic users who donate their works for you to download. A 800X600 large font skin for Mimic should be the first priority. At this time there were no additional skins on the website.

One of the many great features in Mimic is the ability to create 'shareable' KMF files. The KMF files created in WinCDG Pro are protected and can only be played on the machine that created them. Non-sharable KMF's address the security concerns most CDG publishers have about piracy. They do NOT want people lending disks or making copies than can be freely distributed. The ability to create sharable KMF's is great for unpublished or non copywrited material. There are many great singer/songwriters out there who make their own music, so this gives them a viable option for creating independent karaoke disks, and sharing them through the KMF file format.

Another great feature is the outstanding key controls. They incorporate the '1 up/1 down' half steps that most karaoke players use. A quick side note about key changers. There are no 'Full Step' key changers regardless of what anyone tells you. I have met too many KJ's who insist that their key changer is in 'Full Steps'. This simply isn't so. There are half step and quarter step key changers. If you normally sing a song down 2, and find that it's still too high for you on someone else's machine, then you are used to half step key changes and your singing on a quarter step key changer. You should double the key change to down 4. Anyway, back to Mimic. This advanced program is a feature packed marvel for the PC karaoke enthusiast. If you're looking for top-of-the-line then go no further than Tricerasoft Mimic 2.0

In the next issue, we'll look at the top 3 music book publishing programs. KJ Pro, Karaoke Song List Creator, and Music Book Deluxe. One of these stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Ken Wilson
Croaky Entertainment
Croaky.org