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PostPosted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 11:41 pm 
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I see on the statistics page that there are approximately 8400 members of KSM. I wonder how many of those 8400 members actually are still active or still log on to the site? The reason I ask is that I've been writing a book on sound reinforcement for KJs, and wondering if it would be worth the effort to promote it on the KSM forum. It is an ebook and I will be giving it away to anyone who will sign up for my karaoke podcast (the name of which I'll disclose at a later date) scheduled to air in January.

There is some very good information already being shared by many of the members, but I do see a need for a single source that can a) bring all of that information together in one place, and b) a resource that explains the fundamentals of sound and acoustics while at the same time removing some of the mystery. As I state in the opening paragraph of the introduction "Understanding a few basic principles of sound and acoustics can go a long way in helping you recognize and treat or at the very least minimize any sound and acoustic issues that you may encounter with your sound reinforcement system in the field." I've tried to take some fairly complex technical issues and reduce them to simple layman's terms with a minimal amount of physics and math so that in the event a KJ/host is faced with a weird or awful sound issue, the KJ can understand how to recognize the causes and take appropriate action to either improve the situation or learn that he or she just might have to make the best of it.

There are some sound reinforcement issues unique to KJs that can be challenging to even advanced users, and I hope to shed some light on those issues and give the reader a certain measure of confidence in being able to address them.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:30 am 
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Often, the sound mix available in a craphole bar is not optimum.
Over the last 50 years or so, I rely on a studio environment to play with optimized audio.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 7:57 am 
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Maybe a Step By step guide would be better including a section on:

*CABLES/ADAPTORS
*MIC TECHNIQUE
*CONNECTING A SECOND DISPLAY (The correct way) HDMI, VGA, Etc.
*SPEAKER PLACEMENT
*FX SECTION (Knowing how to properly use reverb/delay/compression
*LEVEL CONTROL (Sometimes LOUD is just to F'n LOUD)
*MOBILE KJ vs. INHOUSE SYSTEM
*BASIC SOUND ENGINEERING FOR THE KJ
*ADVANCED SOUND ENGINEERING FOR THE KJ
*HOSTING SECTION (Hosting techniques, Interaction,Etc.)

Sound Reinforcement covers so many aspects. (Yamaha released an awesome one)
Remember the main K.I.S.S. rule when making your e-book and good luck.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:52 am 
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Hey JD ... that is sort of the point of the ebook. In fact I place a lot of emphasis on understanding room acoustics because the single most important thing that affects any sound reinforcement system is the room itself. In my experience with live sound over the years more often than not room acoustics were not even so much as an afterthought in the design of the space. Sometimes the room designs were so acoustically "unfriendly" that you might think that the architect went out of his or her way to purposely hijack the sound of the room.

One of my goals in the book is to show how to quickly size up a room. I'm not talking about a highly technical analysis here (i.e. nodes, modes, nulls and standing waves) but to at least have a basic understanding of them so a KJ can walk into a room, estimate the shape and dimensions of the room (to calculate room resonance, etc.), reflective surfaces (to estimate early reflections and reverb or RT60), and a few other variables.

Like I said there's a lot of good information and advice given here in KSM, but there's also a good measure of ill-conceived premises and misunderstandings, much of which has been propagated by the equipment manufacturers and passed on as gospel by those of us who are gullible enough to believe it, and I include myself in the gullible crowd as there was a time when I didn't know any better. That's not to say that there isn't some good advice and education provided by the equipment manufacturers. However if you don't have a sound understanding (pun intended) of sound and acoustics then there's no way to be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 12:00 pm 
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Hey there karaokeniagarafalls

I will be covering some of the topics that you've mentioned, but some of it is outside of the scope of the book. Although they're all worthy topics I won't be covering performance issues such as mic technique (which is probably more a patron issue than a KJ/host one), or FX. I do have a section on signal processing which covers things like EQs and compressors/limiters, (which I recommend against using anyway with a few exceptions) etc., but things like reverb and delays or even "loudness" issues are too subjective. I don't know that there is a "proper" way to use FX. For me, less is more when it comes to effects, but then again that's just my preference. It's all a matter of taste.

I'm not now nor have I ever been a KJ/host so I can't really give advice on hosting, something of which I know nothing about. Also I don't know what you mean by "sound engineering". The engineering good or bad has already been done and is embedded in the content so, what is there to engineer? I'm not trying to be coy here but I'm trying to understand what you mean by engineering when at best there are a couple of live vocal microphones so what is it that you'd like to see on the topic of sound engineering? Along those lines however I do have a section on how to tame your content so that you aren't constantly adjusting the volume controls between the different karaoke labels and in many cases even from song to song within the same label. I hadn't considered addressing house systems as I thought those might be rare exceptions but if they're not all that rare then I would reconsider and add a section on house systems.

Here is a sample listing of some of the chapters that I've covered thus far in the book: What Is Sound? - The Physics of Sound (properties of a cycle or Hz) - Sound Wave Properties and Characteristics - Psychoacoustics - Perception Of Sound - Pitch, Loudness and Timbre. On the hardware side: Transformers - Amplification - Connectivity - Signal Processing - Gain Staging - Input Sources and Monitoring.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:34 pm 
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It's just karaoke. I don't think many kj's will want to even take the time to learn about sound waves... 99% of the members on here don't even bother with "tuning a room"

now if you're talking about "how to handle a "drunk singer" or "Mic hogs" then you may get the attention of some members who look for advice.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 2:39 pm 
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He He .... sorry no help with those issues. BTW ... the reason they don't bother trying to "tune the room" is because it can't be done. It's a misnomer probably perpetrated by equipment manufacturers who try to sell their cheapo EQs. At best you can compromise your sound system to accommodate room anomalies but nevertheless it is a compromise and it doesn't "tune" anything. Nevertheless sometimes it's the best you can do under the circumstances.

I can remember in the 80s I used to bring an RTA, an Earthworks mic, and would "pink" the room, only to learn later on that what I was trying to accomplish was impossible with an on-board EQ and more often than not made matters worse. Proof that the old adage "a little knowledge is dangerous" is oh so true. I ended up dumping the test equipment and the EQs and i just basically brought my Crown amps, an Allen & Heath mixer and my own custom designed tri-amped speakers which I loaded with 12" ATC woofers, 8" JBL mids and EAW horns. For large rooms I would add a sub loaded with two 12" ATC woofers in a rear loaded folded horn designed and built by a Canadian firm who's name escapes me at the moment. Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of using EQs. They usually do more harm than good especially in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are doing.

In my opinion that is all the more reason to have a basic understanding in the physics of sound. It really isn't all that difficult to understand the basic stuff and the knowledge will benefit the sound system far more than any EQ would. From reading posts on this forum there seemed to be an interest in bringing a quality sound to their venues. Something that is IMPOSSIBLE if you don't take the time to learn the basics.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 4:06 pm 
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ok now you've got my attention. WHAT DO YOU MEAN TUNING A ROOM CAN'T BE DONE?
Are you saying that even though i've had the best sound for more than 25years, i've been doing it all wrong?

i think we need another opinion from Klark Teknik.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 5:34 pm 
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Bastiat wrote:
... that is sort of the point of the ebook. In fact I place a lot of emphasis on understanding room acoustics because the single most important thing that affects any sound reinforcement system is the room itself...

This will make for fascinating reading, and I'm looking forward to it.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 8:18 pm 
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Hi Karaokeniagrafalls,

I'm sorry that you were offended but I was only stating the facts. Whether or not you have the best sound is of course subjective and a matter of opinion, but the only thing that really matters is if you are satisfied with your sound. As far as saying that you're doing everything wrong, well I said no such thing nor did I imply any such thing. As far as your reference to Klark-Teknik, they make good products or at least they used to but that doesn't allow them to defy the laws of physics, and indeed they can't. They wouldn't be the first company that makes audio products that implied that they've defied the laws of physics. I don't need to look any further than my own back yard to a company called Bose where I can get fed all the b.s. they're willing to hand out.

What I did suggest however is that you can't tune a room with a graphic equalizer or even a parametric equalizer for that matter. All acoustic spaces have their own sonic characteristics that can only be altered physically or mechanically, period. End of story this isn't even debatable, and I don't care what Klark-Teknik or Bose or any other company hawking their products has to say. There isn't an EQ on the face of the planet that can change room resonance, early reflections or standing waves. These are all characteristics of the physical space that a room occupies. I'm sorry you don't know that, but getting offended by the truth won't help you learn it either, that is of course if you are even interested in learning.

All small rooms have peaks and severe nulls at all low frequencies, not just the mode frequencies and that is determined by the room's dimensions. This has a profound effect on low frequency acoustic problems. For any given low frequency, there will be places in the room where a peak exists, and others where a deep null exists. Likewise, for any given location in the room, there will be frequencies with a peak in the response and others with a null. Nulls occur at a distance from most boundaries (walls, floor, and ceiling) equal to 1/4 the wavelength of the frequency. Other nulls occur at odd multiples of that distance: 3/4 wavelengths, 5/4, and so on and so forth. Peaks on the other hand occur at even wavelengths, 2/4, 4/4, 6/4, etc. This should be evident to you by now that you can't alter the physics of peaks and nulls with an EQ.

There are just so many variables that for Klark-Teknik to suggest that they can "tune a room" (that is if they indeed actually have made such a claim) with a static piece of electronics such as a 31 band graphic EQ that can magically address these issues and other issues such as comb filtering, phase issues, standing waves, acoustic interference is downright laughable. By the way, when pink noise is analyzed in bands, the levels of all frequencies within each band are averaged together. Even measuring at 1/12th octave spacing is far too coarse to see the true room response so even if you could "tune the room" with an EQ, how could you possibly do that with a 1/3 octave (31 band) equalizer?

The only thing you can do is alter the frequency response of your sound system, and aside from speaker placement, like I said in my last post in some cases that might be the best you can do, but you do so at a cost. There's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't alter the room resonance because it's a direct result of the room dimensions. I'm including that formula and other formulas in my book. You can learn a lot about a room if you want to dig deeply by loading Audacity onto your laptop. I'm also giving away a test signal CD or a link to my website along with some other goodies with an audio file that contains a sine wave sweep of 260 sine waves in increments of 1 Hz from 40 to 300 Hz, along with instructions. There are a whole bunch of other cool things you can do with Audacity or any other DAW that if nothing else some might find educational. These are the kinds of things i will be addressing in my book, and hopefully a lot of fun stuff as well.

Anyway, I really am sorry that you were offended but I hope you see the rationale behind my remarks so as not to have taken them personally.


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 9:52 pm 
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getting to technical, I've lost all interest now!

and if your ebook is as technical as you get with persons in this forum then they may download it, but never fully read it or even understand it.

most people are just in it for the quick buck and don't care enough to change or even want to learn to change.

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 5:43 am 
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I never get upset or offended in any way shape or form, but many KJ's in the industry since karaoke started know that the best way to run a karaoke show is with the natural acoustics given off by the room they are in. Sure it will sound ambient but hey... fill the room with people and it's all good.

Remember the #1 rule.

K.I.S.S. > Keep it short and simple.

On another note BOSE will be BOSE. It Just sounds good all around (But that's my opinion).


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 6:09 am 
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Hey there Mightywiz ... the last post did get too technical. I did try at first to explain that what you can do electronically is to EQ your sound system to accommodate a room but it doesn't alter or "tune" the room itself. What it does is notch out whatever frequencies in your sound system that the room is particularly sensitive to, but I couldn't seem to articulate the point. Probably my bad for not being able to do so but as they say .... it is what it is.

In my book I try to break everything down to layman's terms, but I do have sections in the book for those who would prefer to see the math and get a deeper understanding of acoustics. The book is designed for KJs so I understand that in general I'm not speaking to acousticians or engineers. I've tried to turn complex problems into simple solutions that the average KJ can use to their benefit. In the end you might be right in that maybe there aren't enough people who care about their sound for any of this to even matter. If that's the case then the worse thing that could happen is that I wrote a book for nothing. :|


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 6:25 am 
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there are probably a small hand full of "Sound guys" on this forum that will appreciate your book on Sound but... this forum is mostly about karaoke songs and gear.

There are many acoustic forums that may best suit your ebook.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 7:18 am 
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karaokeniagarafalls wrote:
there are probably a small hand full of "Sound guys" on this forum that will appreciate your book on Sound but... this forum is mostly about karaoke songs and gear.


Agree to this!

Out of the 5,000+ shows i've hosted over the last 19 years, i've only used my own set of EARS to adjust overall sound with no complaints to report.

Sure the sound could've been better in the already noisy bars and restaurants
but no one would've really noticed...or cared. Even the working professional singers complimented the sound, and when asked for feedback on improving the sound, stated it was perfectly fine.

So long story short, i made my $1,000,000 or so on karaoke then got out of it full time.

I will say that quality Mics, Mp3Gain, and decent speakers helped quite a bit...but having a good set of EARS did the most!


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 10:40 am 
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Bear in mind that my original post was in referencing the number of KSM members. I was wondering if that number is unintentionally overstated due to inactive members, or members who just signed up and never went back on again, etc. Judging by the handful of posters in these forums it doesn't seem to me at least to be representative of 8400 members. The reason that I started to write this book in the first place is because after having read through many of the threads on the forums, I thought I saw a common interest and inferred (probably incorrectly so) that KJs were always looking for ways to improve their sound so I thought I would write a semi-comprehensive book on sound reinforcement systems for KJs.

I'm not a KJ nor have I ever been a KJ but having been to a few shows over the years, I could see a couple of issues that are unique to KJs. Issues that hadn't been discussed in this thread. The whole thing sort of got off on a tangent instead and ended up in a discussion about acoustics which isn't the main focus of the book. In fact, of all the shows I have attended, I can't say that I've ever been horrified by the sound systems. After all it's not like we're dealing with several acoustic instruments on stage with monitors for each musician, etc. We're talking about one or two open mics and the rest is preprogrammed material so it's pretty hard to screw that up. The biggest problem I did notice however is the inconsistency in the sound of the tracks amongst various karaoke labels. The discrepancies are not only in overall volume (MP3Gain seems to do a good job with that) but also in dynamics and equalization/mastering. There are different solutions to this problem depending on whether the host is using a disc based or computer based system, but nevertheless there are solutions, and I have a whole chapter devoted to that in the book, but here again there may not be enough interest in that topic either, with MP3Gain being sufficient for the most part.

The book has gotten more attention than I intended for it to get, sort of like the tail wagging the dog. It's a free giveaway as an enticement to join my karaoke podcast starting in January although judging by this thread, so far I'm not so sure if a podcast for KJ hosts and karaoke enthusiasts is such a good idea. I'm beginning to think there won't be enough interest to warrant the effort. So if nothing else, I guess this thread is helping to serve as proof of concept which right about now is not looking to promising.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 6:11 pm 
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In my humble opinion this forum went from 100 or so weekly-active members 5 years ago to roughly 15 or so now, due to the in-fighting, cheerleading, and not-as-friendly-tone-of-voices that used to exist.

I personally am grateful that the mods let Chip (who was banned for a spell) back in because he truly EXPOSED the corruption and hypocrisy behind many manufacturers. It took awhile to do so, we lost many members, but the TRUTH was finally allowed to see the light of day.

I also believe there are FAR LESS working KJs overall, not primarily because of lawsuits, but because karaoke isn't as popular in a lot of markets like it used to be. There are many more things to do nowadays than sit and wait an hour or two to sing one song.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 6:12 pm 
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Great idea on the book. I'll support you and your podcast. Thanks for contributing here by the way. It IS and will be appreciated by many. :)


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 6:20 pm 
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Most of us are "Mobile KJ's".
I think it should be the Bar/Lounge/Venue's responsibility to Acoustically treat there Entertainment space.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2017 7:58 pm 
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Hi Johnreynolds ... thanks for the kind words. I understand Chip's and many other KJs anger and frustration with the "manufacturers" (there goes that word again), but there is an unseen side of the story, but at this point it really isn't worth rehashing. Unfortunately because of the way in which things were so aggressively conducted (and I understand why it was done that way, not that I agree with it) by some of the producers (manufacturers) I think it rubbed an awful lot of people the wrong way. In fact at the outset and probably due in part to my libertarian principles, I was the only active producer (with maybe the exception of Irv Kratka at Pocket Songs who was in his own little world) that I'm aware of that rejected that approach. I did file several lawsuits as well, but those suits were for copyright infringement against hard drive sellers. Taking the more severe approach that the others did in my opinion would have caused just as much of an uproar irrespective of their own licensing issues, but anyway it looks like it's water over the damn at this point.

Anyway, when you say that there are FAR LESS working KJs is that, in your opinion, due to fewer venues featuring karaoke, or fewer nights at the venues that do feature karaoke or possibly both? Perhaps you might have your own theories.


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