Hi Rusty, I'm a little late replying to this - please forgive me. I don't get to these forums nearly as much as I should.
If there's a 10-second gap then that almost certainly means that whichever program that you're using to play is chopping off the silence at the start of the music.
With CD+G (karaoke) discs there is an approx 10-second period of silence at the start of the music during which the title screen is displayed, if you're using a music player which jumps past any silence then that is your problem.
That 10-second silence is carried over to all current non-DVD karaoke; I riop a lot of karaoke from disc and post it here - it's what you willl find.
Personally when working I use VirtualDJ which will play almost anything that I can throw at it (including music and graphics files inside ZIP or RAR archives); you can get it for free from their website, I paid $399 so that I'm legal when I'm working; at my home computer I use WinAmp with two accessories which:
1. Let me play CDG files which have exactly the same name as the mp3 file, in sync with that mp3 >>> in_cdda.dll (I think)
2. Play ZIP files which contain an mp3 and a cdg file with exactly the same name >>> in_zip.dll
If you have a further question for me here please let me know by PM so that I can get here and sort your amswer.
Cheers, BJ
Edited for spelling / punctuation
