Perhaps this should have been my first post but as usual I just dive in and bugger thru a leaning process.. We use DAWS (Digital Audio Workstations) for karaoke and DJ systems. I went digital about 6 years ago and have run the gamit with different karaoke players. The players keep track of a karaoke rotation, singer history etc and using 2 sound engines such as Winamp provide the capabilities to play karaoke which consists of the mp3 and a cdg file which supplies the graphics (words for the song) and using dual display has a graphics screen for the operator console and pipes the the singers graphics to a monitor on stage.

Dj music is played by player 2 and there is variuos fades manual and auto betwwen the two..Sax & Doptty And Roxbox uses the same data base as Microsoft Office (MDB file) Winamp has a third party plugin which reads the cdg file and displays the graphics

Ok ive installed etch and using Code weaver crossover can install Winamp and halfway get it to work The players cannot be minomized and show up on all 4 work screens.. I can install Roxbox but the data base is totally incompatoble with Linux

Win Xp is even worse than 98 se for DAWS because it uses more and more system resources. A typical Daw is stripped of all possible processes and is never connected to the internet Its main function is to process digital audio and even record on the fly live into wav files. I guess you can realize what XP does after a few hours,,,,,,Linux would be an OS that one could tailor and streamline exactly for these needs.. Form my experiment I know it is on the verge,,,

I have visions of confifiguring an OS for DAW and putting it on a flash drive .
Another task which taxes a system is making books from the data base We currently (after trimming) have about 13,000 karaoke tracks and over 10000 mp3 for DJ.. Another stick? And if I did want to wireless to the inet for updates have a flash drive with an OS for that?

Am I way off base or just wanting too much too early? Bear in mind thse systems make 50-100 dollars/hr and more..

Any thoughts or suggestions? I am currently running xmms into a very sophisticated sound system and the sound engine isnt too shabby at all, It might be better than windows version of Winamp.....