Okay,  I’ve seen… and heard enough,  Contrary to the Washington State slogan, “It’s NOT all good”, yet many believe that it is.  Anyone that could work their way into a karaoke gig has, ranging from the tone deaf to “I was in a band” to “I wanna be a DJ” to some of the most awesome singers one could imagine, yet only a small few have grasped the concept of what it’s all supposed to sound like, have gotten there on their own or  willingly seek out the answer to “How do I get there?”. 

     For the curious, it all comes down to understanding what your working with and how to achieve one common goal.  This comes in four basic parts, 1) Quality music, 2) Quality vocals, 3) Mixing the two and 4) the ability to fill the room with the first two without limitation.

     To achieve this goal there are several steps to be taken, one impacting the next.

Step one,  Room setup, where to place the speakers, where will the stage area be and where will the system be set up, all this will affect the level of quality that can be achieved afterwards.

Step two, tuning the system to the room, the music should sound crisp, clean and full.  It should be able to fill the room and still have that quality sound.  The microphone level brought up to blend into the music with the same qualities as the music, this is the part where the host actually has to work.  

Step three, setting the effects for optimal sound enhancement and maintaining the quality.

Sound 101

            Each time I go into a new karaoke club, I look at where the host has their equipment set up, speaker locations and the room in general.  Some rooms are tougher than others but it can be done.  In most instances, in a narrow room the karaoke speakers are on either side of the “stage area” next to the host and system, with a wider more open room I find the speakers more to the corners behind the stage with a monitor at the singers feet.  There have been exceptions where the hosts recognize the flaws and place their speakers and stage area in a more functional configuration.

            So you asked ( yeah… you did! ) what’s wrong with that, it sounds fine?  With most of these setups the sound has to be compromised to try and prevent harmonic oscillations….  Huh?...  feedback!.  Typically, because of the setup and the volume being pushed out to try and “make it sound good” , systematically the mixer equalizer settings are pushed back towards a 12 O’clock position (that’s straight up) which does remove most of the feedback but also removes most of the music and vocals.  The results,  a lot of bass, muffled music and vocals and a fair portion of the rhythm section is gone… the part the singer needs to follow the music.

Solutions, the goal here is to fill the room clearly giving the singer the ability to hear the music with the vocals allowing them to adjust vocally so they can be more “right on”.

Narrow room – put your speakers in the back of the room facing the stage. 

Wider, more open room – two speakers, in the corners facing the opposing corner,  four speakers one in each corner, separate controls between front and back.

As far as that stage monitor… it is not your friend, for a non-amp’d monitor it would need its own amp and full equalizer properly configured. An amp’d speaker, i.e. Yahama, JBL, Mackie, etc.  typically, these speakers are designed for larger venues.  They work great as room speakers but their purpose is to get the distance.  Optimum sound location for these speakers is from 30 to 50 feet, so if you have enough volume to hear one of these at five feet your optimum audio is bouncing off the wall and ceiling behind the singer.  If you really want to use this, recommendation would be to put it at the back of the room facing the stage and adjust accordingly.

The Rainbow Theory

            When I walk into a Lounge and the first attention getter is that foggy sounding bass, unfamiliar lyrics and not enough rhythm left to identify the song, I have a fair picture of the mixing board and full band equalizer (if present).

Technical note, music and vocal “singing” consist of a blend of tones, like a guitar, a rhythm key consists of six separate notes played simultaneously creating a harmonic key as the strings oscillate, one can hear the pitch of that key but what isn’t noticed is the secondary (higher pitch) tones that are generated, these are referred to as harmonic frequencies and can be a second or third harmonic.  It is these frequencies that will typically be the cause of harmonic oscillation or feedback that we try to eliminate.  

If the equipment in the room is set up for optimum performance then the potential is there for a quality performance.  Generally speaking, music has the same characteristics as a rainbow.  If one looks at a rainbow the outside colors are red and blue with all the other colors in between, this is the basic makeup of any rainbow.  Music has a different terminology, most common mixers in use for karaoke have three equalizer adjustments, some have four and are used to control the frequencies in each band .  From bottom to top they are low , mid (or low-mid and high-mid) and high.  Associating these with a rainbow, low is red, high is blue and the mid control (you may have guessed) all the colors in between (also where most of the vocal and rhythm comes through).  The low band or bass frequencies setting controls the amount of thump allowed out from the music and the fullness of the vocals. The mid band controls how much of the vocals and rhythm are allowed through, too much and you sound like being in the bottom of a barrel, not enough and a bad telephone call comes to mind.  The high band is actually used to keep harmonics in check that are generated coming through the upper range of the mid band. With the low and mid equalizer bands properly set the high band can be used to adjust down the high pitch sounds in the music that are so irritating and take the edge off the vocals of some singers.  To get full control of the harmonics in a room a full band equalizer has the best effect. Used properly a full band equalizer can selectively minimize these effects, allowing the system to be tuned to the room making adjustment for the resonant frequencies that can come alive during a performance.  When I speak of resonant frequencies in a room, I refer to the frequencies that specific items will begin to vibrate or resonate; every object has a resonant frequency and there are some big ticket items in most lounges, ie: windows, mirrors, even the speakers and microphones (depending on quality, better quality equipment has this suppression built in) may cause this resonating effect.

A quick note on equalizer settings in general, if a channel being used on the mixer is set to remove a particular sound range and the main equalizer is set to enhance that sound range…  is it going to work... I DON'T THINK SO, SCOOTER!, once it is removed from the sound going through the mixer it cannot be put back.