Karaoke Forums

I have the ONK HTS760 Onkyo Dolby® Digital EX/DTS®-ES 6.1-Channel Home Theater System, two Shure SM58 microphonew, a DVD player, a LCD TV and many Karaoke DVDs. Just for a fun at spare time, is that good enough to play karaoke after buying a mixer? Help please for selecting a mixer? Thank you thank you!

It's been said, home theater speakers may not be suited for vocals..

My Yamaha PAS system was less than $400.00 USD and works well at home..

It's been said and I still don't buy it. I've never seen any proof of it. How many CD's do you play through your stereo that have vocals in them? I'd bet most of them do. Home stereo speakers are designed to reproduce all frequencies from around 60Hz (giver or take 20 or so) to 16-20KHz just like PA speakers. So I've never understood the statement that home stereo speakers can't be used for live vocals.

Now, if you don't know how to mix properly, certainly the horns on a typical PA will take more abuse than the full range speakers or tweeters in your home stereo system. However, I can't see why if you're mixing properly and not pushing the system past its limits why home stereo speakers wouldn't work. I'm open to someone that can provide a technical explanation on this one (Lonman, I'm all ears, I respect your knowledge and I've seen you make this claim before).

As far as the original question, for home use there are a lot of mixers under $500 that you could look at. The Yamaha MG series would be a great option. They have pretty much everything you need in one unit (compression, effects, a 2 track RCA out to make it very easy to plug into your stereo, etc). Even the 16 channel version is under $500 and for home I'm sure you could go smaller (say the 8 channel model). The MG series gives you good Yamaha quality in a small entry level package.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

CDs are compressed. Live vocals have dynamic range that CDs don't have.

I blew two pair of home theater speakers doing karaoke. I absolutely believe that you could make them work, but the natural tendency is to turn it up. Then you hit that big high note a little too close to the mic and BOOM!

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The Mackie DFX 6 is a fantastic budget mixer. Great effects too

Modern CDs have their volume peaks severely limited, and their dynamic range drastically reduced to make them seem "louder." The only way I'd be comfortable running live vocals through a home theater system or home stereo would be with a good limiter between the mixer and the power amp.

More setails on what goes into mastering a CD here:
http://www.turnmeup.org/

. . . and to bring things back on topic . . . for home use I'd suggest this little combo:

Alesis 3630 Dual-Channel Compressor/Limiter with Gate

Behringer XENYX 1202FX

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Dave's not here.

Thank you all for your great suggestion! I am an amateur and I don't know much abot music at all. But I do enjoy good music and beautiful songs. I also hope to learn and practice to sing these songs by Karaoke. I don't need very powerful speakers, but I would rather to have a decent mixer to make my vocal sound better. I only need no more than three microphone inputs for the mixer and I don't expect to connect with other instruments. I will only use this mixer to purely connect with my DVD player (for playing karaoke DVD) and microphones. Fortunately, I am able to find this excellent forum and read some posts from all you specialists. Originally, I had the intention to buy a Vocopro one. I changed my mind after reading posts here. I appreciate any suggestion based on your experience to buy a mixer to match what I have to set up a karaoke system. My purpose is to learn and practice singing songs and have a little more fun at home. The mixer I need is able to beautfy my vocal with good quality, not fancy.

One more question, can any mixer separate and delete (or mull) the original vocal for Karaoke practing?

I am appreciated for any suggestions

OMG, we're in the exact same boat. I too almost bought a Vocopro. I too don't want big/powerful speakers. Just some thing suitable for home practice that can produce good sound in a small indoor room setting. See my thread about "Power Mixer + Passive Speakers or Passive Mixer + Powered Speakers."

To answer your question, I found this item that could do what you're looking for
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=182042

Thanks for the link Moon, I sincerely appreciate the effort, however being part of a production company that owns our own recording studio I'm pretty familiar with the process. So everything I've seen here so far suggests to me an inability of the mixer to properly manage gain structure and control transients is what will lead to this, not any defect of the speakers themselves.

Properly managed gain structure and signal flow, coupled with amplifiers and speakers that are appropriately matched so render this a non-issue from what's been described here. So properly compress and limit your vocals and compress and limit your final mix (two typical applications of compression in most live sound situations) and this is certainly not a problem.

I'm starting to guess that the real issue is that folks don't understand the difference in operating levels between pro audio and consumer gear (i.e. +4 dB vs -10 dB) and that home audio amplifiers except in extreme cases probably produce a good deal more harmonic distortion than pro-audio power amplifiers so the speakers suffer when pushed too far.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I have used my home theater system without issue for the past two years or so. I use a Yamaha MG8CX board and use the on board compression to good effect. I highly recommend it. Yes, It's not as good as a DBX compressor however it does it on board, single knob, and keeps the screamers from going over the limit.

It's pretty popular at parties and that system gets a LOT of use from everyone in the house.

I'd suspect you might be right. Clipping and distortion will kill your speakers in a heartbeat.

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Dave's not here.

LetItRip,
So can a power monitor speakers handle live vocal without being damaged?

If you need it with FX:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=580319

Or with out:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=630271

You won't find anything better at that price in my opinion

Powered monitor speakers are designed in for use in recording control rooms which means they're used to reproduce everything from live vocal and instrument tracks all the way through to the final mastered version of the entire multi-track recording. So yes they'd be fine. Again the issue isn't the speakers, it's how you feed them. Learn about how to properly setup the gain structure, use your compressors and limiters and keep your levels where they belong and things will be fine.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I have seen more blown or popping speakers at gigs with socalled pro systems than I have seen in homes. I have had 100 watt home stereo systems that would blow away most of the karaoke systems.

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