Karaoke Forums

Hi, I'm new here and have been reading alot but still have alot of questions regarding some speakers I'm planning on buying. I have everything else such as mixer, mic, cdg player, and such..
Anyways, there are two set of speakers I have my eyes on since it's compact and price range is suitable for me. Note: This is for a small room and home use.

1. KRK RP-5 Rokit Powered Reference Studio Monitor
http://www.guitarcenter.com/shop/produc ... =102516150
Can these handle karaoke? Afraid it's not really made to withhold loud vocal.

2. JBL RM10 2-Way 10" Dual-Tweeter Shelf Monitor
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process ... =nsa&nsa=1

3. Also looked at these and wondering if they're any good or junk.
Vocopro Piano-5
http://www.savinglots.com/lotprod.asp?item=Piano5

I'm open to any suggestions also. Price range for speakers is around $200-$300.
Thank you in advance.

Studio reference monitors are not PA Speakers. They act more like High-Fi speakers, but just hook up to PA equipment. They are designed with the idea that you will be running your signal chain through a series of filters, like compressors, effects processors, etc. Basically, they are similar to home theater speakers in that they are designed to reproduce produced, controlled program sources.

If you just hook studio monitors up to a PA system and sing karaoke through them without the intermittent filters, you are going to notice that they can not reproduce power spikes very well, such as high volumes and vocals. They expect the compressor and other filters to take these spikes out (or for the program material to be already produced, as with the stuff home theater speakers are designed for), so the speakers are not designed to reproduce them.

So, if you plan on using these speakers at higher volumes (like when you wanna rock out!!), they are not going to sound very good. You will need to keep your singing volume and the volume of the music at nominal levels (like the standard volume you would listen at in the car) for the speakers to work as intended. Absolutely no screaming into the mic. It will blow these types of speakers very quickly. Also, the bass is going to be virtually non-existant due to the small woofers.

So, you can do what you want to do, but the CORRECT answer to your question is DON'T BUY HOME THEATER SPEAKERS OR STUDIO MONITORS FOR KARAOKE USE!!

You need a PA system!! If it were me, I'd go with some 12-15" PA speakers that are designed for live performance like karaoke, though this may be out of your budget range.

Here are all of AMS's complete PA systems under $500:

http://www.americanmusical.com/sort.asp ... 06_77_1001

I would recommend the Sqiuer 4 ($230) if you want to stay within the same range as those other speakers, or the Fender Passport 150 ($400) if you want something that is going to sound really good for the $$ (Squier is Fender's discount brand, the Fender is a much better unit).

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C Mc
KJ, FL

I concur.  Studio monitors are usually designed to reproduce accurate frequency response at lower volumes & can't handle high volumes.  These are generally called nearfield monitors, mainly because they are usually sitting on a console about 2-4 feet away from the mixing engineer at lower volumes.  
The JBL's are more like regular home speakers for music reproduction only.  Home speakers & home theater speakers are voiced differently than PA speakers & can't really handle the inconsistencies of live vocals.
VocoPro generally don't make a very good product, those speaker look like they may be good for home theater use, but don't see anything in them that would make me go  -  "Hey, those are nice karaoke speakers!!"  

Get yourself a small pa system dedicated for your karaoke.

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thanks for the replies. It's very helpful.