new karaoke machine

[ppentertainments]

just bought one of these :
http://www.emkaraoke.co.uk/newsite/index.html?target=p_3542.html&lang=en-gb

any comments or anyone used one??
to be racked with in my disco rack to make it easier for karaoke and dvd at race nights. think for the price it has loads of functions and can run off hard drive.

[deltic]

have you used it yet? if so what is your oppinion.
looks good to me

[Adam_F]

I've got one of these, it is very basic, but it does the job and plays discs.
For the money its not going to be a reliable piece of kit to be used 2/3 three times a week, but for the odd karaoke session, its ok.

[UltraBeat Entertainment]

It looks a nice piece of kit. seems to be from a good brand too so should be reliable enough. I would say it seems a bargain at £69.

[ppentertainments]

No won't be used regularly. The main reason behind it is to give me a backup cd player (chould a client bring a cd to play) and also so I can have karaoke facilities at every disco without any extra setup (I often get kids - and sometimes adults - asking if they can singalong to songs). I am also hoping to play music videos through a monitor (mainly for kids parties). This system will give me all these facilities in one unit and I have a 2u space left on my rack system.

The whole system will be Cortex, 5 channel mixer, karaoke (for cd's, karaoke, dvd) with a laptop at the ready as total backup. (spare mixer in van if needed). This will also leave 1 channel left on mixer.

Maybe not your usual 'conventional' setup but will give me the ability to play a varied range of music / video / karaoke types all contained in 1 rack.

[Adam_F]

No won't be used regularly. The main reason behind it is to give me a backup cd player (chould a client bring a cd to play) and also so I can have karaoke facilities at every disco without any extra setup (I often get kids - and sometimes adults - asking if they can singalong to songs). I am also hoping to play music videos through a monitor (mainly for kids parties). This system will give me all these facilities in one unit and I have a 2u space left on my rack system.


Thats the whole reason I bought mine, plus mine was at trade price, so even more of a bargain LoL

[ppentertainments]

Thats the whole reason I bought mine, plus mine was at trade price, so even more of a bargain LoL

Come on then - how much ???;)

[Adam_F]

Come on then - how much ???;)

Can't say I'm afraid, sorry!

[DazzyD]

I don't see why you think it won't be reliable, Adam. My Kam Pro-5000 MKIIs are very reliable and they've been in use for about 18 months now with no problems what-so-ever. If this model is capable of reading hard-drives, then I could be looking to upgrade (especially at that price!).

What I'd would have liked to have seen, though, is an on-board MP3+G, .bin or .kar decoder to play digital karaoke tracks straight from the hard-drive. Maybe that's an improvement for the MKII version that KAM are bound to release!

[Adam_F]

I don't see why you think it won't be reliable, Adam.

Because of the build quality, it looks, and feels very cheap, and if using for more than a few hours, it becomes really hot, and automatically shuts down to cool itself down.

Thats enough reasons for me to say that its not reliable. As back up, or an occasional karaoke player for a few hours at a time, maybe, but if your looking at doing a whole evening of karaoke, I'd suggest buying a professional one.

I've used it for 2 hours at a time and its been fine, but as mentioned, when it was on for a while, displaying graphics on the pubs tv's, it overheats after about 3 & half hours.

[DazzyD]

Because of the build quality, it looks, and feels very cheap, and if using for more than a few hours, it becomes really hot, and automatically shuts down to cool itself down.

Thats enough reasons for me to say that its not reliable. As back up, or an occasional karaoke player for a few hours at a time, maybe, but if your looking at doing a whole evening of karaoke, I'd suggest buying a professional one.

I've used it for 2 hours at a time and its been fine, but as mentioned, when it was on for a while, displaying graphics on the pubs tv's, it overheats after about 3 & half hours.

I just thought it might have been the same build quality as the 5000 MKIIs that I use - it looks like a very similar unit. My karaoke shows usually run for 3 hours and I often use 2 of these players and they've never let me down once. But I haven't used this player before so I'll take your word for it, Adam. And I agree - they do sound a bit on the cheap side at nearl half the price of mine.

I think overheating sounds like quite a serious problem. If these units are inherently faulty then I think I'll give them a miss. But, at the same time, if it's just a case of overheating I wonder if it can be cured with a £4 internal fan fitted. I had an overheating problem with one of my powered mixers and it was cured by my electrician adding 2 of these fans. It's worked brilliantly ever since. Best £8 I ever spent!

[Adam_F]

£4 is certainly as cheap option of fixing it, I might give that a go one day, if I have a bit of free time, as I'm not going to use mine anymore as I'm currently trying to rip the karaoke discs to my laptop, and use something like VDJ, as I'm just starting to play with visuals, so it'll be handy running it off the off same laptop.

[DazzyD]

£4 is certainly as cheap option of fixing it, I might give that a go one day, if I have a bit of free time, as I'm not going to use mine anymore as I'm currently trying to rip the karaoke discs to my laptop, and use something like VDJ, as I'm just starting to play with visuals, so it'll be handy running it off the off same laptop.

Good luck with the digital karaoke.

I currently have 3 different types of system that we use for karaoke. The main one is the Toshiba/HP/Dell laptops running VDJ (plus BPM for disco). We used to use Win-CDG which was basic yet very reliable but I much prefer the extra functions of VDJ. The second set-up is the two KAM Pro5000 MKIIs which works well and the third is a 300+1 CD Disc Changer which is great for not having to flick through boxes of discs but it's quite slow to change them over.

[ppentertainments]

Used new Kam machine tonight - 2 hour karaoke at local uni.

Obviously not as good as other machines (I used to use JVC) but does the job. Managed to run a projector, computer monitor and 15"lcd from it which I was impressed with. Very simple and ideal as a starter, backup or occasional use machine. For the price can't really fault it.

[DazzyD]

Nice one, Chris! Glad to hear that the Kam player turned out to be a bargain for you!

Are you saying that the player has 3 different video outputs or did you use an output splitter to run those different visual displays? I sometimes use a video splitter to send signals to multiple screens but they've all had A/V sockets. I'm wondering if your displays have different inputs (ie A/V, VGA,etc).

[ppentertainments]

Player has 3 different outputs.
s-video to projector, vga to monitor and a/v to 15" tv. The functions and connections on the machine for the price is unbelievable.