Karaoke Machines to Host Private Concerts in Your Living Room

Singing out loud doesn’t have to be something you do only in your cramped shower or while sweating it out in a room full of strangers. An at-home karaoke machine lets you be a legend in your own living room. You can use yours to shake it off to the very same musical accompaniment as Taylor Swift in front of a crowd of your own choosing, or you can use it to practice for your next karaoke night out without judgey onlookers. But what kind of karaoke machine should you get? Let’s look at several different options.

An all-in-one karaoke microphone, the cheapest and most basic option, is easy to set up and extremely portable. A microphone, a speaker, and a mixer that combines your voice and the backing music through the mic are all built-in. You just have to connect it to YouTube or a karaoke app on your smart device for the instrumental track and lyrics before you start singing. Alas, since it’s just one mic, pulling off duets might be tricky unless you and your partner don’t mind putting your heads together and belting into the same device.

Since they don’t come with speakers, mixer-only karaoke machines give you more audio freedom. These are popular with karaoke DJs because you can connect them to a wide range of sound systems in different venues. Some will even allow you to forgo an Internet connection and get your karaoke content from CD+G discs as well as from MP3+G files and sometimes DVDs. If you opt for a pricier model, you can form a super singing group and use up to eight microphones with one machine. For those who won’t be playing traveling KJ, you can satisfy all your karaoke needs with a mixer-and-speaker combo that’s compatible with both smart devices and CD+G software.

If you want one device to do everything for you, an all-in-one karaoke machine is the way to go. Some even display the song lyrics on a built-in screen. Although these are the heaviest of the bunch, they’re still fairly portable. While the ones with a lyric screen and CD+G capability are completely self-contained, you can still connect them to a smart device or a TV-screen monitor. The one drawback is that these tend to be more expensive and offer fewer options than the other styles.