Monday, November 09, 2009

You You Should Invest in a Karaoke Amp

By Jonathon Hardcastle

A karaoke amplifier is a powered amplifier designed specifically for the needs of the avid karaoke equipment owner. Many are designed for the karaoke DJ while a few are more designed for home use. They typically are designed to make hooking up and taking down a karaoke rig easy and provide numerous extra features over a typical public address system power amplifier.

These features typically include features that any DJ would appreciate. For example, many of the karaoke amplifiers are considered hybrid amplifiers because they have features normally associated with pre-amps.

One of these features is multiple inputs so you can send audio signals from multiple sources. This eliminates the need for a mixer if you have two audio sources, such as the karaoke source and an iPod for filler music. Many of these units also include a radio tuner.

A standard karaoke amplifier should have enough power to efficiently run four speakers. For a good setup, you want one speaker for the monitor, one speaker for the subwoofer, and two main speakers. The main speakers and the subwoofer are what gets the sound to everyone in your audience.

The monitor speaker enables the karaoke singer to hear themselves. The best applications, like amplifiers, for DJs have a built-in crossover; this means the subwoofer's low frequencies only go to the subwoofer and this keeps them separate from the rest of the mix. Since higher frequencies don't need as much power, you can run the monitor and main speakers on the same channel.

Be sure to match your amplifier to your speakers and vice versa. You want to make sure the speakers can handle more power than the amplifier can put out, but not by too much. For instance, if your amplifier can put out three hundred watts, then speakers that are rated to handle four hundred and fifty watts would be perfect.

On the other hand, a speaker would need to handle around 1,000 watts if the amplifier could put out 800 watts. But, when running that many watts, it is likely that you are using multiple speakers. If so, you can total the wattage from each speaker and add them together to determine exactly how much they can handle as a pair. For instance, with an 800 watt amplifier, you could run two 400 watt speakers, two 450 watt speakers, or even four 200 watt speakers.

Keep these figures in mind when buying a subwoofer because you don't want to run a 1,500 watt subwoofer on a 300 watt amplifier. If you do, you won't get the best sound quality and may even burn out the amplifier because more power is needed than what is being provided. - 2361

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