Karaoke Forums

Hey Guys,

I'm trying to setup a simple laptop karaoke system for home parties with my family. So far I have my macbook pro and a usb microphone. Since macs don't support hardware playthrough, I can only use software playthrough, so there's some delay, which I can't have. I'm planning on using www.karafun.com for the karaoke video and background music/vocals. I just wanna play everything through the TV speakers using and HDMI connection from my laptop to my tv.

So far I got it all working, but I have that sound delay. How do I get rid of it? Do I need an external sound card or other piece of hardware? Thanks!

Here is an article that explains latency. Latency is the term for that delay you are hearing.

http://www.presonus.com/community/learn ... io-latency

I am not a mac guy so I can't help with figuring out a way to get direct play through. Also, what software are you using for the play through. You should really only be dealing with the first three blocks on the 27.1 ms latency chart if things are at a normal efficiency unless you are running it through effects. Then you are adding the forth block which puts you on the edge but can usually be acceptable. Better DAW (digital audio workstation: The software doing the work) programs will have a lower latency and that may be where the issue is. Are both the music and the vocals delayed? Or is the music fine and just the vocals delayed?

It can't be done that way because of the digital transmission of the audio and video signals from your computer to the TV and your home sound system. The digital signal need time to decode to analog and the error correction to take place. If you take the video signal via VGA from your Mac to the TV and use a mixer for all your sound you will get rid of the delay. but you may blow out your speakers (mostly the high end) as they can't handle the "live mic.s " uncompressed signals.
You can use the HDMI out by turning off the audio to the HDMI and using the head phone out of the Mac to the TV audio but you will still need a mixer to get all of the sound together