Setting Up Songs and SoundFonts in SongHub

Installing the app is the easy part — the part that decides whether SongHub sounds amazing or awful is what you put in the folder. This guide covers the two ingredients: song files and the soundfont.

The two things in your SongHub folder

Everything lives in one folder named SongHub on your device storage. Inside it go:

1. Song files — .kar files (karaoke files with synced lyrics) and .mid files (standard MIDI, lyrics only if embedded). These are the actual songs.
2. SoundFont (.sf2) — the instrument sounds the app uses to render the music. One file, chosen in settings.

Organize songs into subfolders if you like (OPM, Love Songs, 90s, etc.) — the app scans subfolders too, and it keeps a huge library browsable.

Picking a soundfont (this matters more than you think)

A MIDI file is just instructions; the soundfont is the band. The default phone synth sounds thin and toy-like, while a good sampled soundfont gives you realistic piano, guitars, drums, and strings. What to look for:

• General MIDI (GM) compatible — so instruments map correctly.
• Reasonable size — quality soundfonts run from ~30 MB to several hundred MB. Bigger usually sounds better but loads slower; on older phones, stay under ~150 MB.
• Well-known community picks — karaoke communities have long-standing favorites; the tutorial channels that popularized SongHub usually name the exact .sf2 they use, which is the safest starting point.

Drop the .sf2 into the SongHub folder, open the app's audio/synth settings, and select it. Switch between a couple to hear the difference — it's night and day.

Building your song library

Copy your .kar and .mid files into the folder, open SongHub, and let it scan. The app indexes everything into a numbered songbook you can search by title or artist. With MIDI files this small, even a modest phone holds thousands of songs; big community collections run to 47,000+ tracks and still fit comfortably.

Prefer KAR over plain MID when you have the choice — the synced lyrics are the whole karaoke experience. Plain MIDI files play fine as music but won't show words unless lyrics are embedded.

Where do the songs come from?

Song files come from karaoke communities, tutorial channels, and shared collections — the app itself ships with none. Stick to reputable community sources and avoid anything that asks you to pay for "premium song packs"; the community shares these freely. Our guide on where to find MIDI and KAR files goes deeper on legitimate sources and red flags.

Quick troubleshooting

• Songs play but sound robotic — no soundfont selected, or a bad one. Set a quality .sf2 in settings.
• Some songs missing from the list — rescan the library; occasionally the scanner skips files with odd names.
• Lyrics out of sync — the KAR file's timing data may be off; try another version of the song.
• App slow with huge libraries — normal on old phones with 40k+ songs; a lighter soundfont helps.

Once your library's built, you're done — everything from here works offline. If you haven't installed yet, start with the Android install guide.