Karaoke Forums

Hello everyone!  This is my 2nd post and I hope I will get some good answers.  I sing Karaoke at a private club near where I live.  Even though I sing Karaoke, I know very little about the electronic part of it.  Here is my question:  I want to purchase another Karaoke Unit for my personal use and practice here at home.  The one that I will leave at the club has a Peavy amplifier that is hooked up to it.  What I want to know is:   What other equiptment do I need to buy for my new Karaoke player to work?  Will the sound come from speakers or do I need to buy another amplifier to hear the sound?  I am on a fixed income so what price range are we talking about here?  Thanking you in advance for any and all help.  Sincerely,  mrpete1939

You can buy a simple karaoke machine for home use for about $60.  You can use it as a stand alone unit, or you can hook it to your home entertainment center and run it through your tv and stereo.  

Here's one I found using the links on the left


http://www.acekaraoke.com/singing-machine-smg-180-vertical-load-cdg-player.html

_________________
Spreading the karaoke gospel

Any Best Buy or other electronics retailer carrys home karaoke machines in stock. They can all be hooked up to your home stereo easily.

_________________
"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

The karaoke machine type setup is what we used for quite some time and were very happy with it. When it is hooked into the home stereo it works quite well.

Let me be the first naysayer in the group and recommend the units WITH a speaker... don't ruin your home stereo by hooking up live sound through it. Most home stereo units aren't rated for that!

Thanks for your reply to me.  I'm not very "electronically educated"...but, do you think that the sound quality would be good if I bought a single amplifier box that I often see in Karaoke bars and restaurants?  mrpete1939

Mr. Pete,

This post is better suited to the tech forum if you want to post it there. Let us know what you want to spend and we'll let you know the best way to spend that $$$.

For under $100, you are going to be able to get an entry-level CDG player to hook up to your TV and/or home stereo that is going to have basic features and is going to be at the lower end of sound quality, but will get the job done. If you already have speakers hooked up to a home-theater-type system at home, the receiver unit acts as the amp for the speakers, so you just connect your player up to the receiver and the TV.

Starting at about $300, you can get an entry-level PA system that will sound more like a live karaoke show at your local bar, but will be very low on features and at the low end of sound quality as far as a PA goes, but will sound twice as good as hooking anything up to your home stereo.

A decent PA system with most of the bells and whistles of a pro-KJ system like you see at the bar can be put together for about $800-1000 at the low-end.

Remember that of this includes buying the CDGs that play the music!!

As for your question about "do I need an amp" is really dependent of what end you are trying to acheive. For home use, only higher-end systems will utilize separate amps. The most efficient and cost-effective way to put together a good home PA system would be with a mixing amp, where the amp is built into the mixer. A mixing amp limits your flexibility as far as upgrades and fine tweaking is concerned, but is exactly what most people who do not have PA experience should have, as it it is much simpler and more convenient to operate. When you said "amp box" I suspect you may have been speaking of a mixing amp and jsut not known what it was. If you saw something like a VocoPro karaoke amp/mixer, or some other brand of "karaoke amp" or "karaoke mixer," chances are it was junk. Rule of thumb, if you are buying a piece of PA equipment that bills itself as SPECIFICALLY for karaoke, you are overpaying for lower quality!!

Let me know if that helps or if you have more questions!!

_________________
C Mc
KJ, FL