Kanto Karaoke Player&Recorder vs Nightingale

Kanto Karaoke Player&Recorder is karaoke software for amateur and professional singers, with live lineup management, mixing and crossfading. It plays MP3, MP3+CDG, WAV+CDG, KFN, MP4, AVI, WMV, KAR and MIDI files. Live Performance shows the current and upcoming songs and lets users queue tracks by dragging and dropping them. Singers can record microphone vocals over a song and adjust microphone and music volume, latency, echo and reverb. The software converts MIDI and KAR files to MP3, with an option to remove the melody track, and supports importing and changing SoundFonts for MIDI playback. Users can select an external MIDI driver or device, and a built-in browser can play online karaoke songs such as YouTube videos. Dual Display opens a second window for lyrics on another monitor or TV while songs are managed on the computer. Free editions are available for Windows and Mac. Paid options include personal and professional licenses, with different device counts and use restrictions; the Standard and Professional licenses last three years.

Nightingale turns songs from local folders or Plex Media Server, Jellyfin, and Navidrome libraries into karaoke tracks with separated vocals, synchronized lyrics, and real-time pitch scoring. Vocal separation uses the UVR Karaoke model or Demucs. WhisperX transcribes and aligns lyrics word by word, and LRCLIB lyrics are used when available. Japanese, Chinese, Cantonese, and Korean songs can use character-level alignment and romanized readings.

After analysis, users can adjust key and tempo and follow pitch scoring. Lyrics can be provided as timed LRC or Enhanced LRC, pasted as plain text for alignment, or edited. Playback backgrounds include 10 GPU shader options, five Pixabay video styles, and video files. The app supports MP4 and MKV videos and experimental UltraStar song folders. Multiple profiles keep separate score histories; navigation can use a gamepad or touch controls. Native Linux, macOS, and Windows builds use CUDA or Metal acceleration when available, with CPU fallback. A web build can run on a Linux computer on a home network and open in a browser. The app is free and open source under GPL-3.0-or-later, describes itself as having no cloud, and encrypts Navidrome login details on disk.