Bought all in one looking for upgrade

[curt248]

I bought an Ion One Party Rocker Max 100W portable karaoke machine with party lights and disco ball.

We are completely new to karaoke. It's for our family (3 small children 7 and under) and friends in our house mainly and possibly for camping in an RV (with regular outlets available).

We have used it with the corded microphone that came with it and we sounded awful. That is likely due to the fact that we have never done this before and obvious lack of talent.

However, I also ordered and tried two wireless Toner TW-630 set. We sounded much better using these microphones.

Since I've noticed such a dramatic difference in sound quality and less embarrassment with the better quality microphone, I'm wondering what else I might be able to upgrade to make things noticeably better yet?

So far it's been tons of fun and the lights have really added to the party feel. They change with the music and have several colors.

I am kind of an audiophile type person as I have been building home theater for myself for the last 25 years and have an excellent setup currently with Klipsch LaScala's up front and Klipsch Hereseys in the rear for 5.1 with a nice 2000 watt 130lb subwoofer. I have made 9 four foot by 2 foot sound panels with acoustic grade materials etc. etc.

I am not looking for that level of quality but I might want better sound quality than the ion party rocker max offers. It's decent and offers about 80 percent of the sound quality and really gives a party vibe with the lights which has been great but max volume isn't as loud as I would like. I prefer to have some headroom for higher volume if needed.

The Ion was really inexpensive at $200 and that price is ok for me. I would be willing to spend around $500 or possibly more if there is a noticeable step up in sound quality and volume.

Any suggestions?

I do have a few A/V receivers and several Klipsch Heresy speakers (I used to buy and sell them for fun). I'm not sure if those speakers qualify as pro audio speakers or not. I know the La Scalas were designed for a public address for several thousand people and have been used for concerts of about 7000 people using two speakers and the Hereseys designed for fill in sound to match the La Scalas with the same midrange and tweeter with only a different woofer. Are pro audio PA speakers for karaoke the same as the speakers they use for live music or are they special. I've heard a few times not to use home stereo speakers for karaoke. I'm not exactly sure of the reason. I'm guessing something to do with clipping or power reserve or something?

Ideally, I'd like to use my stereo from with two Heresy speakers plus a small subwoofer (8 in 100watt cheaper one) and plug in a mixer or karaoke machine or ...? to that stereo to get really nice quality sound but I'm unsure if that is something I can do with a regular AV receiver (5.1 Onkyo TX-SR 605)?

I'm not opposed to keeping the Ion and buying some separate equipment to have better sound quality while at home and the Ion for portability.

I also have a MacBook laptop that would be cool to use as a music source. Is that what they use for bar's karaoke? Somehow hook up a laptop for music source and lyrics etc. It would seem like an entire computer should be able to control the mix from microphone to background music too or is that better with a mixer as hardware in-between the computer and power source and speakers.

So many questions. It has been hard to figure out how to do this karaoke thing. I've tried several times over the last 3 years or so and always give up after an hour or three of research.

[curt248]

no one?

[curt248]

I bought a Pyle PMXU63BT 6 channel mixer and the sound quality is way better to the point of rendering the all in one Ion box useless due to poor relative sound quality. With the mixer (~$70), I just plug it into the the front stereo rca input jacks on my old stereo receiver. The wireless uhf microphone transmitter plugs into one of the channels big headphone tlr type input and the wireless Tonor uhf mics that I bought a pair of for around $40 on amazon work great. The corded mic that comes with the ION karaoke box sounds terrible and I would consider it all but useless. Everyone sounds soo much better with the Tonor cordless mics that I would not consider using the corded mic at all.

If I did it again , I might buy a mixer that doesn't have bluetooth because the sound quality of the bluetooth 4.0 is so bad compared to plugging it into a laptop to play YouTube karaoke songs.

It's crazy but most of this is yeah of course it should sound better plugged in and with a mixer and home stereo but its the very noticeable quality improvement that they provide that is wild to me.

So as long as you have a stereo then you only need to buy a mixer and wireless microphones. This likely will only cost about $100 for really good sound quality. This in my experience means that the people singing sound 10 times better than with the all in one Ion box with its microphone that cost $200.