Karaoke Forums

Hello people...first post here.  I have been bitten by the karaoke bug.  I have been around it (mother does karaoke) for quite some time, but didn't like it until I tried it (imagine that).  So now we are almost done finishing the basement of our new house and I want to be able to karaoke.  I have scoured the site now for an hour or so and I am more confused than I was before.  Basically here is what I want...I have a theater room with a Panasonic HD projector...I want to do PC based karaoke and project onto the 10 foot screen.  Wireless mics are also a necessity.  Located by the PC will be the projector/receiver/etc.  I am interested in just buying music and not spending a lot of time getting it together.  The software at PC Karaoke looks kind of like what I want...I am wondering if any of you seasoned pros thinks different.  I am also sort of confused about the mic setup (what do I feed it through - PC or receiver)...my biggest thing is the fact I want people to point and click and off they go.  I do not want to deal with CD's.  I have a budget of about $1000.  Whaddya think?

Better asked in the techy section -- not general discussion - I'm sure some of the brains would respond there.

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Despite the internet rumor, Karaoke is not Japanese for "drunk buffoon with microphone."  However, "rotation," is Japanese for wait your damn turn!

Thanks for the reply...the headings are sort of confusing.  I just thought it was not that "techy" of a question.  Maybe one the moderators could move it.  Thanks again.

If you're wanting a pc based solution you'll need:

1. PC - w/ good sound card and perferably 2 video outputs.
2. Small mixer
3. Speakers designed for live sound
4. Mics (you say wireless)

You can likely pull it off for $1000... but most of that will go into the speakers.

I'd get an external $50 (or less) USB based sound card.  Soundblaster makes 2 for $50 or less and ADS Tech makes one.

External mixers are inexpensive and a number of manufacturs have them.  I personally like the SoundCraft line for pc based recording and mixing but it's not that good for live sound applications.  The compact 4 is about $150 but you'll likely need one with effects built in like Mackie's DFX-6 which is under $200.

For speakers consider something like the Peavey PR110P or other powered speaker if you don't want to run them through your home stereo setup or the something like the Peavey ProLites if you will be running it through your home stereo setup.  I'm fairly new at the speaker side of things so listen to the others weigh in more so than what I have to say on this.

On the mic side I'd consider a good wired mic over the wireless.  You can get a good mic like the Shure SM58 for about $100, or the Sennheiser 835 for $67 each (in qty 3).  You'll drop far more than that on an average wireless mic.  Of course you could always go with the 2 mics for $15 off eBay but they go through batteries REAL quick and cut out a lot if you sing very loud (don't ask - I just needed a mic to annouce with if I was across the room).  Radio Shack has a couple decent wireless mic setups and Knightshow uses one of them (or at least that's where he bought it).  I've heard good things about the VocoPro UHF 3800 which is a rack mounted 2 mic setup that goes for about $250.

All in all you'll need to balance the quality of each of the items to stay in budget.  
BTW, you'll also need a CD-rom drive that reads the CDG sub codes if you don't already have one - drop another $50 or so on a decent Plextor CD Rom drive and don't dally with anything else that 'claims' it works.

Thanks for the GREAT reply...I appreciate the effort!  My bad...I should have mentioned I already have the PC part taken care of (budget wise).  I am an idiot when it comes to the other stuff...why exactly do I need a mixer (to mix I am guessing - hehehe)?  Is there any way to use the home theater speakers - for instance the right and left front?  I want to keep the clutter down...

You'll want to use an external mixer because it's easier to handle the various inputs that way.  It's also far easier to handle effects externally than on the pc.  The overhead in doing effects in realtime is pretty staggering - even on a fast pc.

A small mixer will give you far more enjoyment in handling the singing/music levels than trying to pass the mic through the input on a pc and then back out to the stereo.  There are professional sound cards that offer balanced connections - including XLR but for the price you'd be better off getting a small mixer to hook up mics.  If you ever plan on letting your friends duet you'll want 2 mics which requires a far more expensive sound card or a mixer.  It's a cost efffective solution to keep some flexibility in your setup.  Another nice advantage is that if you get one that support Hi-Z inputs, you can plug a guitar directly into it, run it as a seperate channel and now you can have your own small jam session at home.  Not everyone sees a need for this but the first time your friends come up and wants to jam and they don't have to lug an amp with them they'll thank you for it!

As for the speakers, you can use any speaker but home speakers are not designed for the rigors of reproducing live music.  Using home speakers for live music, like karaoke, will greatly shorten the life of the speakers.  Even if you're using high-end speakers it's worth it to pick up a small set of entry level live music speakers.  You can drive them with the home stereo amplifier but I'd go with listening to music / movies through studio/club speakers instead of hoping the home speakers hold up to the rigors of live music.

So I can use Audiograbber to make MP3's from the Karaoke discs I have, but I cannot get Winamp to play them.  I can get Winamp to play the MP3's, but no graphics.  I also have the CDG plugin for Winamp, but I cannot play from the Karaoke disc either.  Any ideas o'great ones???

After hitting the submit button...I seen MrOctober's post.  I will also try some of the pointers in there!

you need the winamp cdg plugins.

http://geocities.com/akaraokelounge is my yahoo site and we've tried to make that easy for folks to understand some of the software options.

Thanks for the reply...I stated previously that I already have the CDG plugin.  I can see it under plugins...it just doesn't seem to be working.

Ran the CDG plugin again from some website...now it works like a champ!  Now I just need some way to autopopulate track names etc.  I am looking into CD+G AutoName.  Where do I get this?

another helpfull link I think Knightshow sent this to me months ago

http://www.karaokedownload.biz/kara2mp3g.html

I think I got this figured out...Audiograbber rocks.  I queried for my discs and it had 2 of the 4.  Thanks to all for getting me going.  Now I need a simple mic/speaker set up and some Silver Bullets and I will be all set!

let me know if you still need the cdg autoname... it will only work with kjpro, however

This is probably more technical than I really want to hear, but I'm curious - why would live vocals reduce the life of speakers?

much more severe live highs and lows, and the imperfection of live singers hitting peaks that just won't be in a normal recorded (professional) range.

If you want the ultimate PC based Karaoke system... you can't beat the real thing like www.vod-home.com

Check it out!  You just can't get any better than this!

don't ADVERTISE the product... TALK about it. That site is a manufacturer's retail site... with several things. There are already ADVERTISERS on here.

If there's something you want to DISCUSS, then give us specific details... otherwise, go spam somewhere else.

I am not part of this company what so ever... I just though that some of you are not aware of this Karaoke product...

it comes with hardware and software that let you have dual display and remote which allow you to store all your karaoke songs in a pc that you can categorize.  The great thing is that everything is on demand, you create a playlist and it allow you to controll everything form a remote.

Yo

Trust Kightshow ... he will bring you around to a basic understanding - then thrust you beyond comprehension. ... Anyway, listen to him  :whistle: