Karaoke on a PC is a fun activity to do at home using your existing equipment. Having said that, you may well want to invest in a few additional pieces of kit to make the experience more fun and authentic. On this web page, I will explain how I set up my computer for Karaoke at home.

The 3 key elements for Karaoke on a computer are, a microphone, a feed of the Karaoke songs, and speakers. In my case, I bought a professional-style microphone from an audio store, and used a PC sub woofer unit driving wall-mounted speakers. And for the feed, I simply used YouTube since there are many Karaoke tracks uploaded there.

Here is a diagram of my Karaoke on PC system:

For the PC, I used a notebook computer with an HDMI output that I connect to a large screen HDTV. This is useful to make it easy for everyone to read the words of the song on the screen.

For high quality audio, I use an external USB Audio Interface rather than a PC sound card. This connects to the PC via a USB cable so only digital signals flow between the Karaoke on PC and the sound unit. This allows for a low noise floor (no hiss, or buzz due to the computer components).

Also, the unit allows the connection of professional audio cables (3-pin XLR). The unit has controls to mix the audio levels of the digital audio from the PC and the Microphone.

Finally, there is the speaker system. You could use your home Hi-Fi system or your existing PC amp/speakers if they are up to the job.

Unfortunately, some of the cheap microphones that can plug into a PC sound card have low sensitivity, so they require more gain in the sound mixer settings to achieve adequate volume. But, this also means that noise from the internal electrical signals within the PC are amplified too. And a cheap plastic microphone will be very light in weight adding to the feeling of cheapness.

For the microphone, I recommend one that looks the part, with a good-quality cable. This will allow people to act like they are a real singer for more fun.

Home Karaoke Rig

In this photo you can see the Audio Technica microphone connected to the Roland UA-25 USB Audio Capture Unit via some high quality cable that can withstand bending and being trodden on etc.

The keyboard of the Notebook computer is covered by a sheet of paper since we were grilling meat in the background, so it was to protect the keyboard from grease/smoke.

On the TV screen you can see the advantage of using a large screen TV to display the Karaoke lyrics. This is connected via an HDMI cable to the Notebook PC. And we are controlling it via an iPhone (more on that later). And next time I need to remove the junk from the background!

Home Karaoke Setup Tips

Once the system is assembled, you need to set up the audio levels. The sensitivity setting for the microphone amplifier needs to have just enough gain to not boost noise, but have adequate volume of the Karaoke singer's voice. Holding the microphone close to your mouth makes a big difference to the volume.

On my audio unit, there is a mono button to make the microphone signal mix equally with both stereo channels of the incoming digital audio (the karaoke track), and a "monitor" button to send the signal directly to the audio output. The output volume of the PC is used to control the level of the background track to mix it in at an appropriate volume.

Then, the overall volume is controlled by a combination of the audio unit's output level control, and the volume control on the amplifier. Once the mixing levels are set up, these are the only controls that you should need to adjust. Or you may tweak the PC output level to compensate for changes in the Karaoke track volume.

Finally, like I said earlier, I search on YouTube for tracks e.g. Xyz song karaoke and look at the thumbnail images to spot the actual Karaoke video with lyrics rather than a video of a person singing.

So hopefully I gave you some tips for setting up Karaoke on a PC for fun at home, and you maybe aim to build a good quality rig with HiFi speakers and a large flat-panel display.