Hi
gotrich
You have just opened yourself wide up
We've been doing karaoke now for numerous years and I would like to give you my humble opinion.
The problem is not your equipment. (I am not talking about the computer, read MTU’s specs on that!!) You seem to have good brand name sound equipment.
What I see 90% of the time we go out to a “karaoke” bar is some yahoo that bought a system for a $1000,00 somewhere, a handful of disks at Wal-Mart, and now believes he/she can run a karaoke show. Enough to make you scream!!! The sound mixing is awful, the microphones sound as if you sing with a pillow over your face and the bass is booming over it all.
My opinion is don’t invest billions in sound equipment. Spend some quality time with your sound, get to know your mixer. A good way to start is the following.
Setup your karaoke system in your house/room/basement.
Put your favorite CD in your hi-fi system (in the same room) and listen to it.
Now sing through your karaoke system. You have to mix your karaoke system until you sound like the CD. Here are some pointers.
Let somebody sing a song (unknown to you) and write the words down as he/she sings. If you can do that, your mic is set pretty good.
Listen to a CD, you will hear the vocals over the music, not the other way around.
If you don’t know the dynamics of an equalizer, don’t use it!!!
Start your mixer settings with everything in the flat position. Your karaoke CD&G was recorded in a studio, if you have a good sound system; you don’t need to enhance the CD&G. Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t tweak your system, what it means is don’t go fully clock/anti-clock wise with your bass/mid’s & tops.
Good luck karaoke'ing