Karaoke Forums

Hi Ya'll,

This is my very first post.  I have done some reading in here, but still have some questions.  We are in love with karaoke and are ready to buy some equipment, but haven't the slighest idea what to buy.  I am not a tech person AT ALL.  Mostly, our singing now consists of a bunch of people screaming at the TV with on-demand karaoke through the cable company.  No mics.

We are ready to move on up.  I see all kinds of set-ups, what can we get that will sound decent on a budget?  We want a couple of mics and some speakers that aren't too big.  We have a laptop, maybe we could use with the TV?  We'll need to be able to find and afford music too.

This is pretty much something fun for us to do on a Saturday while drinking tequila and acting really stupid with our friends.  Our standards aren't very high at all, really, but we don't want to buy something that totally sucks, either.  You can't dumb it down too much, seriously.  (Ok, like I KNOW we need electricity....)  PLEASE help.

Oh, I am a pretty good eBay shopper too, if I know what to buy......


Thanks so much!!

Luuvy

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Thank you so much for your reply!

That looks like an awesome PA, unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how it all works together.  I buy a separate karaoke player and then hook it all into the TV.....?  Really, my sincerest apologies, but am TOTALLY CLUELESS here.

Luuvy

depends on your needs for what you want to do

There are PA type of systems, where it's all inclusive. Some even have a small monitor screen... but in ALL karaoke type of systems, you have to hook up to the TV the way a VCR or DVD does...

Usually with a yellow RCA connection.

Your left and right audio (red and white rca connections) hooks up to a stereo or mixer. If you need more power, the amp helps boost signals, and provides a cleaner, crisper sound.

Some people use the mic connections with the players... but I seriously recommend AGAINST that. Use the mixer. I also recommend against playing on a HOME stereo system. Buy speakers that can handle LIVE MIC sounds... Most speakers are rated for handling CD type quality, but when you put in live singing, those spikes to the delicate speakers will eventually degrade them to the point they're ruined in a short time... you may not notice it right away, but it'll happen.

I'm not going to throw a lot of technobabble at you... chances are, it'll just be more confusing. Why don't we handle this conversation one piece at a time. Go more short term goals rather then the larger term goal of "I want karaoke in the home".

We only want to rock, sir.  We have a small room, a TV set, a few friends, and a burning desire to sing the hits of the great ones such as Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Ocean, and, of course, Mr. Kenny Rogers.  Surely this is not an impossible dream



I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure what you mean.  My short-term goal is to brush my teeth before I go to bed tonight.  Are you saying that we can't get a decent system for our modest needs on our budget?

Thank you so much for your advice!

Luuvy

it's not impossible, but there ARE several ways to do this.

For a budget of only $300, I think Lonnie's idea would be fine, but maybe overkill for you guys.

http://www.karaoke.com/cgi-bin/WebObjec ... =Portables

There's a list of a couple of stand alone systems. They're cheap, but will work pretty well for what you want to do!

Lonman has steered you in the right direction for the speakers and mixer.
Since you have a laptop, use that as your karaoke player.

1.  Connect your laptop to the Phonic pa system using the cable below and connect it from your laptop's audio out port or the headphone jack to the audio in that's on the phonic mixer.

2.  Connect your laptop to your tv or lcd projecter using the laptop's rca video out jack, svideo jack or other video port.

3.  Purchase some karaoke player software for your laptop in order to play karaoke music

4.  Purchase some karaoke CDGs, DVDs, etc. that you play using your laptop.
I think

5.  Purchase an extra microphone so that two people can sing.

* I'm sure people will recommend several karaoke programs that you can use on your laptop.
In order to rip CDGs, your laptop cd or dvd drive must be able to read the karaoke CDs.

You plug your karaoke player into the mixer.  Then you plug your mics into the mixer.  This will be all of you music & vocals, learning to adjust it all is actually easier than it looks.  The karaoke player has a video output which hooks into the tv for the words display.

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Well you keep stating you want to 'rock'.  Want decent sound but not lower.  $300 generally isn't a very good budget for even an all in one system - i've seen players alone cost $300 without any PA.  The little PA package I steered you toward i've heard pretty good reviews about even from Phil who is a member of this board that owns one - for the price, it's supposed to 'rock'.  Now you will still need to get a player, which there are players out there for under $200 now days, not sure of the quality of them, haven't used any of the newer ones.  You could use your laptop, may need to get a video card that will support dual monitor so you can display the words on the TV.  You may need to get an external cd/dvd rom that will support CDG if your laptops doesn't.  You will need the karaoke program that you can rip your music to the hard drive & play the music back.  Some programs that cost money have the ripper already inclusive, other programs that are free, you need a couple different programs to make your music & separate plugins to be able to make it all play back.  You will also still need to buy your music - you do not want to do the illegal file sharing or trading, buy your music.

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I'm using a laptop for karaoke.  I use my desktop to rip the CDGs to MP3G format and then copy the ripped files to my laptop.  I have an older Dell laptop that won't read CDGs so that's why I use my desktop for ripping.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

You guys are so awesome!  We are going to look into the info you have given and see what would be best for us.  In the meantime, if we go the laptop route, are there any programs that you would recommend?  We have both mac and pc laptops.  We would rather use the mac since the pc is the old man's work computer.  

Please, any more suggestions are most welcome.  I don't mind buying used, esp. stuff like mics.  I am the type who prefers well-made vintage stuff over new crap, as long as the technology is basically the same (does that make sense?) I just don't know what to look for.

And Lonman, yes, I want to rock............and rock I shall!

PC Doctor is right on with his suggestions but to save even more so you can get your music, I would advise getting AUtoKDJ  as it is free along with winamp.
first isntall winamp at ww.winamp.com and then install auto KDJ autokdj.com for downloading the programs.  Between the two installs you will get everything you need to play your songs.   Next you need software to convert your songs from a cdg and a site for if you choose rather to buy your songs off of the net. For ripping the songs I suggest KJripNZIp from www.kjamp.com as it works with most drives.  For downloading songs already converted you can go to www.tricerasoft.com for songs made by Zoom, Panarama Top Hits Monthly, Forever Hits and Music Maestro.

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

Urrr. A mac huh.
Hmm.

The mac has very limited karaoke programs, Ktunes, Istar are the only ones I am aware of.  You have more choices with the windows based PC karaoke programs.
You have PCDJ KJ, Hoster and Hoster Lite, RoxBox, AutoKDJ, Sax & Dotty's, Karafun, pykaraoke, Swift ultralite and elite, Compuhost to name a few.

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

Yeah, I done gone and used the "M" word.

Actually, the old man just told me that we could use the PC, and he will try his best not to get fired so we can keep it!  Great news, huh?

We like the idea of a pieced-together system rather than an all-in-one (although we are very appreciative of the suggestion.)  It would be nice to be able to upgrade different components in the future if we so desire.

For right now, this is just something to have fun with, so we're basically just trying to frankenstein a little system together.

Hey DannyG, I meant to tell you that I'm a she.

I started not to mention SoundTech but...
I'm using a SoundTech S20 pa system for my home basement.
The SoundTech was $229 or less.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably go with a Phonic pa system per Lonman's suggestion for home use on another thread.
I thought about going with the Fender squier 4 pa system but their tech support has yet to email me back.
I hate to buy something and it goes bad and I have to ship it off to get fixed.
My SoundTech system is still working but if it stopped working I'd have to ship it off for repair.  If prefer a pa system that I can get it fixed locally if need be.
I dont know if Phonic has repair system in most major cities or not.

Here is another phonic pa.
It will save you $30.
It seems like they could lower this model to $250 so that it wouldn't be so close in price to the 620 pa.
Some places were selling this same model as a closeout for $219.

http://www.americanmusical.com/item--i-PHO-PPAK408.html

After getting the SoundTech, I got new mics and longer speaker cables.  The SoundTech doesn't have speaker pole holes.  I'm using wood to make the speakers point upward.

Wherever you buy from...insist on the best shipment method available. See my thread.

http://www.karaoke-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9512

Good luck,

Jim

For the extra $30, the Phonics would be a much better buy, better effects & eq'ing capabilities, and a little better expandability.

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