Karaoke Forums

I work part time as a campground host at a campground, and we show movies on the projector from time to time. Just a small group of employees, not the general public. Attached are a couple of pics of the setup so you get the idea.

In the past at another location I've done karaoke with a PA, mixer, compressor and wired and wireless mics, which was great, but it's a lot of setup and is a bit loud for this environment. Then recently someone gave me one of these $30 wireless bluetooth karaoke mics with built-in speakers:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071SGMQ7V

While it's obviously lacking compared to a full setup, it was enough to get people singing. Surprisingly much! Full on howling around the campfire while reading the karaoke from youtube on a phone. So I was thinking that in the COVID era these mics are a nice low key way to have an easy campfire-singalong style karaoke party, since they're cheap enough to just get a bunch of them so people can use the same mic all night, or share with their partner. And it's also a nice way to keep the volume down. And we're outdoors, socially distanced, and not sharing equipment.

It would be nice to get the music playing from all the mics at once though, which is where I'm currently stumped. I know I can broadcast to a single speaker, and I might do that as well, but I'm thinking that the distributed sound source (the speakers in each mic) might make it so we can have quieter music volume overall, which is a big factor here.

So far I'm thinking something like this:

- connect a headphone distribution amp to the output from my laptop. Maybe this one (alternative suggestions invited, would be nice to find one with 1/8" outputs):

https://www.amazon.com/Knox-Four-Channe ... B07GXF5WVP

- connect a bluetooth transmitter to each output from the distribution amp. These are pretty well reviewed and can broadcast to two mics simultaneously:

https://us.amazon.com/Nulaxy-Bluetooth- ... B07S2912VV

Sure would be nice to find a bluetooth transmitter that can feed more than 2 mics at once, but I don't see any. I don't imagine anyone knows of one?

And this BT transmitter has an 1/8" output as well, so I could conceivably just daisy chain multiple BT transmitters and skip the headphone DA... Might be asking for gremlin trouble though.

- and I can of course boost the music volume with regular BT speakers, but for this setup just the mics might be enough.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas for how to improve the system? Keeping in mind that it's just a goofy little low volume campfire setup.

Any other mics you think I should be considering?

And what are people's thoughts about spraying these mics with sprayable hand sanitizer. As a shot in the dark, do you think that would harm the mic? Maybe wipes would work better? Note that I'm not talking about for swapping mics during the night, I'm talking about at the end of the night. People would use the same mic all night. I see a few "mic sanitizer" products on Amazon, I wonder how it differs from simple hand sanitizer.

And hopefully that BT transmitter automatically reconnects with the mics, and lets me use 4 of them to pair with 8 mics (no frequency conflicts etc).

Thanks for any help!

Number one bluetooth sucks for vocals. I know from experimenting with bluetooth speakers. Never again.
Number two you need a separate mixer attached to actual speakers.
Just use corded mics and buy enough to be able to allow everyone has their own mic. As each singer joins in they can attach their personal mic to the cables. If you want a huge sing along then get a mixer with enough inputs for those mics. But I would consider limiting the number of people who are singing until they get a vaccine that is safe and tested correctly and not rushed out. I will stop on that subject and let you make the final decision on that.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

One thing I should clarify in case it's not clear to anyone else: these mics don't transmit vocals, they just receive the music and play it through their internal speaker. As well as amplify what's being sung into that mic of course.

Attaching a pic.

And definitely not comparable to what you'd get with proper speakers, microphones, a mixer etc., but surprisingly workable for a campfire type setup. With appropriately low expectations, ha.

connecting them all at once, that requires them to send the vocal sound somewhere which it seems these do not. i don't think it is physically possible to make these do what you are asking. another system like you had before would be better even if it is smaller. remember, no system is too loud, it's just being set up improperly for the area. a 10,000 watt system can be used in a nursing home with no problems because...as i tell singers who are afraid of singing too loud for the mic... i can only turn it up so much, but i can turn it down to whatever i want. from the picture of the area, a single Alto TS315 would be plenty for good sound there and a small board. wired mics are fine, but wireless is cheaper then ever, either way.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

> connecting them all at once, that requires them to send the vocal sound somewhere which it seems these do no

I think it might still be unclear. The mics each have a speaker in them. Those speakers will all play the karaoke track (which will be broadcast from my laptop). That's what the bluetooth transmitters are for.

Each mic's speaker will only play the singing of the person holding that mic. The other night we only had a single one of these mics and most people were just singing unamplified, which worked surprisingly well, so I think the little mic speakers should be enough for this setup.

As far as volume, it's a campground, at night. I've got a PA, mixer, traditional mics, etc., but they're way too loud for what I have in mind, even on low volume. And besides it takes a lot of work to set up for a campfire... It's fine for one or two times but I'm trying to make something I can bring out to the campfire easily and often, spur of the moment. And we can't really get into too much trouble with these little microphone speakers, ha.

Add the fact that you would have to do a lot of bluetooth system connections every single time a new singer is singing. Better to have a mixer connected to a music source, regular speakers and regular mics.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

> Add the fact that you would have to do a lot of bluetooth system connections
> every single time a new singer is singing.

All the mics would be connected via BT all night. Remember, this isn't a big venue full of people doing karaoke, this is 6-8 friends sitting around a campfire. Should just be the same 6 to 8 mics all night, all connected simultaneously.

I'm hoping the mics and bluetooth transmitters play nice together and will auto-reconnect at the start of the session, so I can just label everything and know what's connected to what and have it connect without any action on my part. But all that remains to be seen.

I ordered 4 mics and two BT transmitters (each transmitter connects to 2 mics) to test the theory. If they don't auto-reconnect I'll try a different BT transmitter, that would be a deal-breaker since I'm trying to keep things super simple. I want to simply connect the daisy-chained 4 bluetooth transmitters to the output of my laptop and turn on the 8 mics as needed.

> Better to have a mixer connected to a music source, regular speakers and regular mics.

Undoubtably, but that's not what I'm trying to accomplish here. I'm trying to make a tiny, minimal set up, campfire-style karaoke rig.

Well on the off chance someone finds this thread looking to set up a simple campfire setup, here's an update on this system now that I've done some testing:

- the speakers in the mics really sound amazing for what they are. Shockingly amazing, given appropriately low expectations. A PA with proper mics and proper mixer and proper signal processing will sound better of course, but for an outdoor goofing around setup I think these will work. With all 4 speakers/mics turned on I get a loud distributed sound. And the LEDs are hilarious.



- they auto connect pretty well to the Nulaxy BR04 bluetooth transmitter. Just put the Nulaxy into pairing mode and turn on a mic and it'll connect to it. Each Nulaxy connects to two mics. Took a bit of practice to get the hang of it, had to read the manual, ha.



But unfortunately the "passthrough" on the Nulaxys only works when the switch on the side is in the "passthrough" position, and in that position it doesn't transmit audio. So I can't just daisy chain the bluetooth transmitters together, connecting one transmitter to the output of the previous one. Which means I need to get a headphone distribution amp, and connect one Nulaxy BT transmitter to each output of the headphone amp. No biggie, but it's a bit of extra gear and complexity. Maybe I'll build it all into a box.

Another issue is that there's sometimes a tiny bit of delay with bluetooth speakers, and since each mic is a bluetooth speaker you get 4 speakers that sometimes are very slightly out of sync. Sounds like plate reverb. Hopefully not a big deal when doing actual music, but that remains to be seen since I haven't tried the system at a proper shindig yet.

Yeah, you should definitely go for corded mics and speakers. Bluetooth connections are great, until they aren't, and they often aren't in terms of sound fidelity, especially if you have lots of simultaneous connections.

I tried going bluetooth between my Yamaha MG10XU mixer and my EV XA1 speakers using Alto bluetooth xlr dongles and also later I used Behringer 12 inch bluetooth speakers. I ended up getting a uhf wireless speaker system but stopped using it because it interfered with my Samson headset wireless mic system. Both of the bluetooth setups had latency issues where vocals were delayed noticeably.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I don't understand why you say your regular system would be too loud. Remember, everything is running through your mixer. You control the sound of the mics as well as the music. And you can make it as loud or as soft as you want it. This doesn't make any sense to me.

Most of us here have multi thousand dollars invested in sound equipment that we use at our shows. We can either rock the house, or keep the volume super low as in soft dinner music.

So, if you have the system, use it. Do away with the toys.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

I like this one:



KaraoKing microphone is a lot like the BONAOK microphone. It also represents the whole system for singing – 5 Watt speaker and microphone. There is no support for MicroSD, so you’ll need to always rely on your phone, tablet, smart TV or whatever you’ve got. The only way of connection is Bluetooth – it is the most widespread way of connection in any case, so there shouldn’t be too many concerns about the absence of USB input.

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Are you looking for a microphone that fits your purpose perfectly? This is exactly where you will find it - https://micspeech.com