Karaoke Forums

Hi all I am in the process of going digital. I bought MTU Hoster and a Toshiba laptop model L675 Intel i3-370m 4gb ddr3 500gb hard drive 64 bit win 7 home premium with HDMI & vga output. I am halfway through ripping my 600 cdg's (what a job) My question is how is everyone hooking up their audio to your mixer/amp. I tried with a 3.5mm to rca adaptor from the headphone/line out to my mixer it sounds ok but not great. I was thinking of getting this DAC.
http://soundapproach.com/high-resolutio ... -2000.html

Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

I use this:

http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-U-CONTR ... B000J0IIEQ

The headphone outs aren't really great for pro audio, generally the sound is ok but never great. And often times can induce an unagreeable hum into the sound.
I prefer the Lexicon Alpha interface over the Behringer linked to. Sound is quite a bit better for $30 more.
http://www.zzounds.com/item--LEXALPHA I run this on my laptop and have compared it to my PC pro audio card costing 3 times as much & it sounds just as good.

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I use the Behringer UCA202 as well, it's works just fine, but it's not something to brag about. I do have a question for someone tho on this line of thinking... OK, today HDMI is available on many laptop models, but my question is this: "If HDMI has video/audio capabilites, why isn't there a way to utilize that connection for both at the same time? Meaning, how to get from HDMI laptop outputs to an RCA red/white/yellow inputs?" Am I missing something? I surely am not the most computer savvy person alive, but is this possible?

Well they make converters for HDMI to component outputs, they are expensive and turns the quality into component level pretty much losing much of the HDMI benefits.

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I have looked around, and found some myself. How they work? I dunno. Do they work? dunno that either. But for karaoke/dj application would the loss of HDMI quality video/audio be that bad? Now if we are talking movies, yeah, for sure the loss would be extremely noticeable, but for graphics for karaoke, would it even matter?

OK, dot ya all have a heart attack, but I tried the above USB adapter, and DIDN'T like it. Sure the sound was good, but every time the music player (winamp) stopped playing the song (mp3), I got a loud "click" over the speakers. Switched back to my Sounds Blaster USB audio adapter, and no clicks....weird


Some day I will upgrade to a Lexicon, such as the one Lon recommends

For karaoke it wouldn't really matter but kind of an expensive solution just to get what you would get from an S-Video or VGA converter for quite a bit cheaper.

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No, if you have a VGA converter, all you get is video, not audio. I was thinking of having it in just one unit, not two different outputs. Instead of plugging 2 different devices into you computer, it would be just one to do the same thing. Less wiring is all.

Well I can tell you this about the HDMI and hooking up to any hi-def tv. It is almost too good. You can really see that most cdg graphics are really pretty poor. A lot of the graphics and any background images are really low resolution and I am sure were never meant to be displayed in hi-def. The laptop I am using is very easy to hook up the 2nd monitor via HDMI all the setting are there to extend your desktop background. I was trying to use a Sony vaio with win Xp but decided if I was going to go digital to splurge and get a new Laptop. Lon the converter you use is quite a bit less money then the one I was looking at. Does the low end sound pretty good on it. From what research I've done I keep seeing reference to "jitter" when using these type of converters. Anything has to sound better than using the headphone out jack.
Thank's for everyones responses this is a great forum.

It sounds excellent. Like I said I run a pro type M-Audio card in my PC that ran me $200 and the Lexi sound ever bit as good. No problems in any respect. Plus it's nice for converting outside sources to digital like old tapes/lp's etc.

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