Karaoke Forums

I have an existing Home Theatre system, using amongst other things a Home Theatre PC (HTPC). I currently use the HTPC to feed movies to the TV. Actually, via a Yamaha RX-V861 receiver. I feed HDMI video and optical audio (5.1) from the HTPC to the Yamaha. Works just fine.

I now want to add a Karaoke system to the PC for occasional parties and the like. I have installed Karafun (and a few other test programs) on the HTPC.

The problem I have is while I can run Karafun ok (or any other Karaoke program), I can never get the microphone input out to the speakers. This is rather important in a Karaoke system!

I have tried to get the mic to work on 4 systems now, with no luck. This is in Windows XP or Vista 64. It is with the onboard sound systems, or an addon Creative Sound blaster card. I have also tried a USB microphone system.

Nothing works. On most combinations I can get the mic to work ok - ie I can record ok - which means the mic hardware is working just fine. Even with Karafun, I can record the mic input ok. As you speak you can even see the Karafun level bar move ok. I simply cannot hear it. On one system with a separate sound card, I did get it to work - but the latency was so bad the voice came out of the speakers about a second or so too late, plus voulme was way too low. Hopeless for singing!

So - unless someone can suggest something to try, I am about to give up on using a PC mic.

What I would like to do is use an external mic mixer. Sounds like a simple thing to do. But this is also a problem as most mixers I have tried (and seen) use RCA stereo inputs and outputs. That is no good in my case as I use optical input and outputs.

So - my question to the good people of this forum is - do you know of any reasonably cheap mixer I can use to mix into a digital audio line? To put it simply - I want to feed the optical cable from the HTPC to the mixer. This mixer should then mix in two mics to this audio. I then want to feed the output via digital to the Yamaha receiver amp. The mixer also has to maintain 5.1 audio out - as when I play movies, I want to keep the 5.1 audio. The mic stuff (when I am using Karaoke) can still be stereo - or even mono).

The closest I have seen on eBay is the Roland ED U-8 USB Digital Studio Recorder. This does at least have a digital audio input and output. This might do what I want, but I do not know.

Any suggestions?

First fair warning: You're going to get a lot of advice on not using your home theater system for live vocals. The range on live vocals will eventually wear out your theater system speakers unless they're compressed and limited.

Now that being said I use the Yamaha MG82CX at home with my home theater. it's as inexpensive a mixer as you can get, had FX on it to keep you from sounding dry and the built in compression does a good enough job from keeping any screeching from blowing things up. There are other options but this is the one I consider the best from a price/performance perspective.

Link: http://www.zzounds.com/item--YAMMG82CX

Couple that with some cables from Guitar Center (lifetime warranty) and some decent microphones (I use the Berhinger XM8500 at home) and you're in pretty good shape.

No mixer is going to maintain 5.1 audio out but that's fine, and digital out for the mains on a mixer isn't something I've seen since that is not a standard. However your Yamaha AV receiver should have no problem taking the stereo out from the mixer main and putting to the back speakers. Don't get hung up on a requirement for a digital signal path since your microphones are most certainly not digital

Unless I am missing something I HAVE to maintain a digital path out. That is because the HTPC has to feed digital audio to the amp during the times I am not using the Karaoke. I do not want to have to rewire my home theatre just for a Karaoke session! That would certainly work, but is impractical.

And my Yamaha amp certainly has no problem with stereo in - but I would have to rewire the amp just for a karaoke session. There is no mixer on the Yamaha, otherwise I would not have this problem. I could switch the Yamaha audio input from digital to analogue as well - but then I would lose audio from the HTPC (which is digital).

I would not mind a switch box even - but I have not seen one that switches digital and analogue. Perhaps I should be looking in that direction?

That mixer certainly does look very reasonable. I did not know about the compression advantage, so that is good to know.

I had not thought about not maintaining a digital audio output. I can switch the amp input pretty easily (with the remote control), but I am not sure if I can do the same with the HTPC. If that outputs to all audio formats at the same time (ie digital, analogue and HDMI), then that might be the way to go.

Thanks for the suggestion - will give it a go today.

[edit] ok - have had a go at this - my HTPC system will not allow both analogue and digital outputs at the same time (so I have to use digital, no choice).

Are you sure in your audio properties of windows you have the microphone ticked and unmuted if not it will record but you wont hear anything over the speakers.
taking your not sure sorry if wront ,double click your audio icon near the clock the little speaker then then click options top left of the control panel then properties you will see microphone if its not ticked tick it.

Quite sure. I am both a technician and a programmer, and VERY experienced with Windows.

And what you are saying to do will only enable the mic for recording. You will still not hear it through the speakers (only through the headphones). To get that to work you need to enable your stereo mixer - which you normally do not even see. But I have done all that, on 3 computers, both Vista (which is quite different) and XP. Believe me, I have spent hours on this, and on help forums like this. I have given up on the PC mic solution - even if I can get it to work, it is so unreliable I would not trust it to work when I needed it. I think I need the external hardware to make it reliable. Probably also better quality.

ok m8 i didnt mean anything by it ,sometimes with some people it can be the simplest thing and when you dont know the person your typing too .

Signal path for audio should be PC-->Mixer-->Yamaha AV receiver.
Signal path for video should be PC-->Yamaha AV Receiver --> TV

You need to create one of your AV selections to be your Karaoke setup. Simply set that option up with the video input from your HTPC and your audio input will be an analog input such as your DVD, Phono or CD stereo inputs. It should be rather straightforward via the menu system, especially if the Yamaha has the option to use Menu over HDMI to your TV. Can't imagine it wouldn't as they advertise an on screen display for the item.

The only down side to anything might be if your HTPC has no method for analog output to the mixer. You'd then need some sort of audio interface with analog output to go to the mixer.

Hope this helps.

You can thank the ridiculous Windows "DRM" (hah!) for that. There is no technical reason it could not, but they prevent it so that you can't stream in one and out the other to a recorder.

Of course it is trivially defeated by myriad software packages, and the only people who end up getting hosed are the legitimate users.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
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This is the problem - the PC has no way to switch from analogue to digital audio. I can do one or the other, but I have to go through the audio setup system on the PC to switch between the two. I do not think it would be that easy to do on the fly. As a programmer, I guess I could work it out, and write a program to do it - but it seems a lot of effort.

This is using the onboard audio system. I did buy a rather cheap Creative Labs sound card, thinking that it would work better than the onboard stuff. And it does to some extent - in that I can actually switch on the stereo mixer, and I can hear the mic output. Better than the onboard stuff in that respect. But the latency is a real problem (unusable), and sound quality is not even close to being as good as the onboard sound. I guess I can get a really good onboard sound card (ie $300-400), or I can go with an external sound card for about the same price. The problem there is that the sound comes back to the PC via USB, and USB is a real pain. It is so easy to get the USB system stuffed up, so you get 'unrecognised device' and the like. No - I really do not want to go the USB route.

The thing is - I am presuming a LOT of people use PC based karaoke systems. So it should not be this hard. No doubt at lot of people are still stuck on stereo audio out - not digital. Perhaps in a few years when everyone has moved to digital it will be a lot easier. I would imagine that every serious home theater system is now digital - I cannot imagine anyone using analogue anymore.

What SB card do you have? I'll tell you now that whatever the output the AV receiver you have can handle it. You might need the optical break out box for the SB card.

If you're not using the built in, onboard audio from the mainboard then the signal path I suggested will work just fine. Lemme know what model soundcard you have and I'll let you know what you probably need to get it squared away.

The card is a Creative Labs Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio (PCI Express)

X-Fi, 24-bit, nice card. We use them here to test audio since they're such a prevalent card in gaming. In fact, I use an Onkyo receiver to do exactly what I am describing to you here. On that particular card you need to run your audio via one of the 3.5mm connectors on the back. Most likely you already run it out of line 1, the one with the green collar, continue to do that. Simply get a stereo 3.5mm to dual RCA cable like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6882781006

And run it as an input on a stereo channel to whatever mixer you choose to use. Then run the output from your mixer mains to a stereo RCA input on your Yamaha receiver. You can get a cable that will be whatever your mixer output is, 1/4" or XLR, and terminate in an RCA connection you can plug into your receiver, like this one:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Live-Wire-1 ... 1166753.gc

The only thing I can't help you with is navigating the menus on your AV receiver to get the discreet video and audio inputs slaved together as a Karaoke function for that device. It's very easy to do on the Onkyo I use and I can't imagine that the Yamaha is much different.

One last caveat: Singing karaoke on your home theater system has been known to damage the speakers unless you have a good compressor/limiter in use. I personally Haven't had it happen to me, but I'm the only singer, I use the compression on the mixer and I don't generally scream into the microphone. Your mileage may vary.

Consider yourself warned

Sorry, that wiring method will not achieve what I want.

Well, it will if all I have to do is wire in the karaoke. But I also run a HTPC (with XBMC). That audio output is digitial (TOSLink) and must remain so as I use 5.1 audio for my movies and the like.

Switching the amp inputs is easy. But switching the HTPC output is not. There does not seem an easy way to switch my PC audio from 5.1 TOSlink for normal day to day stuff, to 3.5mm/RCA stereo for the karaoke stuff. At least I could not do it for my onboard audio card. I gave up on the X-Fi as the sound quality was so poor, and did not investigate further. Maybe that card outputs both TOSlink and stereo at the same time?

The X-Fi seemed very poor next to my onboard audio. I even went and downloaded the latest drivers for it. But there was no comparison. The controlling software was also rather poor, compared to the onboard stuff. But the real killer was the time delay between speaking into the mic, and hearing it out of the speakers. It was a couple of seconds! It was totally unusable for karaoke. I fed the XLR mikes in through an external mixer, and fed the line level audio into the Line In socket of the X-Fi. All pretty normal. I guess the time delay was in converting the stereo input to the X-Fi to TOSLink output, so your method would probably get around that. Since I already have the card, I might give it a try.

The only good thing about the X-Fi is that it has a 'Monitor' checkbox next to the mike input control - so I could at least feed the mike input to the speakers. The onboard audio does not do that.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Double check the X-Fi. I bought one as well for an older tower & didn't realize it had special settings to tweak in the card properties. It made a world of difference in the sound quality.

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Not much point unless I can get the latency issue fixed as well. Do you know if that is possible?

Ok, so TOSlink into the receiver. Hmmm. Might be a way to run a TOSlink into that receiver, get an audio monitor out and then back into an input. Need to look at the manual to see if a loop like that can be run.

I am assuming the TOSlink carrying audio and you're using DVI/HDMI for video correct? An option is a digital to analog converter like this one:

http://www.amabilidade2002.com/toslink.htm

Of course you can always go with an actual audio interface like the Lexicon Alpha and you may not even need a board at that point. Most Karaoke players will allow you to select what you'd like to use for audio drivers.

I have actually ordered a Roland ED U-8 USB Digital Studio Recorder/MIDI Mixer. I have no idea what it does, but it does have TOSlink in and out. I am hoping that will do the job, but it has not arrived yet. ie

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123