Plug -n- play are the players that you see most often at the local WalMart and other retailers. Plug-n-play may or may not have a built-in t.v. screen, but they will all connect to a standard television. These karaoke players are perfect for kids and young adults and there are hundreds of models to choose from. However, Plug-n-Play units run the gamut in terms of quality; sound quality that is. The most important basic feature to look for in a Plug-n-play karaoke machine is the wattage. Lower end players will have lower wattage and limited sound quality, which will be perfect for kids and newbie’s. The more sophisticated ear or the serious karaoke crooner will want a little more power, which is readily available in a Plug-n-play machine, but usually costs a little more. The casual user will be fine with anything between 5 and 15 watts, the more serious user may be more comfortable with at least 60 watts. KJ’s on the other hand will need no less than 160 watts to accommodate large areas.  Knowing what wattage to look for in Plug-n-play karaoke players is much easier than actually finding the wattage of advertised players.  For more details on how much wattage is good for different uses see last year’s article.

Component Players Integrate Easily with Your Home Theatre

Component players are designed to integrate with an existing system; even if that system consists solely of a television. It basically acts like a DVD player; you buy it, hook it up to the television and you can control it through the television screen. Many component karaoke players now play DVD’s, which means that if all you have is a television, you can kill two birds with one stone by buying a DVD compatible component karaoke player so that you can watch movies and sing karaoke in your own living room. Component players are a great value for people who have already invested in a high end stereo or home theatre system since component karaoke players’ sound quality depends on the wattage of the existing system, so if you already have Dolby surround, your karaoke music will too.

Hard Drive Players are All About Song Storage

Hard drive karaoke players are starting to grow in popularity this year. Last year these machines were cutting edge, but several additional models have been introduced to the market and with ever increasing song libraries of karaoke enthusiasts and professionals alike, hard drive players will certainly multiply. These players offer tons of storage on hard drives with varying capacities, but are generally able to hold tens of thousands of songs. They are also designed to be easier to interact with; having lots of on-screen menus and the ability to create custom song lists for easy and fast access, just as you would on an Ipod. Most of these karaoke players also allow you to interact with your computer for file transfer and, because of its hard drive memory- allow you to record your performances, for better or for worse – as may be the case.

Standard Features

Expect to get at least two microphones with any system that you buy and many systems will have expansion slots for more. Other standard features include a voice key control and voice echo; for those who need a little vocal help. The more advanced features include; USB ports for file transfers or operating your machine through your desktop pc; conversion capabilities, which allow you to transfer all of those songs you have on CDG discs to digital format such as MP4; Voice cancellation technology which is supposed to strip any standard song of its vocals, but beware, the technology is less than perfect; and Recording capability, which allows you to record your own performances.

Karaoke Song Formats

By far the most common format for karaoke music is still the CD+G, which means “compact disc plus graphics.” This means that it is a music disc (CD) with accompanying graphics(+G); this is the standard karaoke format. DVD’s are a fairly new format. They are essentially a higher quality version of CD+Gs. Just as in the computer hardware sense DVD karaoke discs have more capacity and provide better quality onscreen graphics and menus. MP4’s are simply the karaoke music version of MP3 files, and allow for easier portability and transferability of karaoke songs. Many karaoke music retailers now allow you to purchase and download karaoke songs in this format just as you would on Itunes.

Beyond the basic formats of CD+G, DVD and MP4, there are other highly specialized but not widely used formats. Super CDG’s allow over 1,000 songs to be stored on a single disc, but your karaoke player must be SCDG compatible to play these discs. CDGM discs include the “multiplexing”  function, which allows  a user to turn the lead vocals on and off with the press of a button on karaoke machines with this function. VCD’s are karaoke discs that contain those corny videos in the background. They are very popular in Asian countries and are rarely used in the U.S.

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