Review: Griffin iKaraoke – For Better or Worse
Posted on 06. Dec, 2008 by Gary in Reviews
Long before countless Americans aspired to be the next American Idol, karaoke let music lovers be the stars of their own musical performances. A pair of new accessories for your iPod offer to bring the karaoke experience home for you to enjoy—instead of just passively listening to your music, you can participate in an interactive karaoke experience. Griffin Technology’s $50 iKaraoke.
Griffin’s iKaraoke is a lightweight and portable karaoke accessory consisting of nothing more than a slim microphone that connects to your iPod’s dock-connector port. Since it’s powered from your iPod, there’s no other hardware required. If you don’t have karaoke songs with the vocals already removed, the microphone includes a vocal cancellation switch for isolating and reducing the vocal levels of your favorite songs. However, as with the vocal cancellation feature found on most karaoke products, the effectiveness of this feature varies from song to song; in addition, the process results in a monaural signal. (The iKaraoke includes a reverb option to simulate a stereo effect when using the vocal-cancellation feature.) The controls are simple and easy to understand: play/pause, back, and forward buttons help you navigate the new iKaraoke configuration menu on your iPod. However, these buttons also control playback on your iPod, so you need to be careful not to inadvertently press them while singing.
To hear to the iKaraoke’s output—your music and your voice, mixed together—you have two options. For the best sound quality, you can connect a standard 1/8-inch (3.5mm) audio cable (not included) from the iKaraoke’s line-out jack, located on its dock-connector plug, to a sound system. Alternatively, you can connect wirelessly, using the iKaraoke’s built-in FM transmitter, to any stereo system with an FM tuner. As with dedicated iPod FM transmitters, you’ll need to find an unused frequency; the iKaraoke transmits between 87.9 and 107.9 MHz. One caveat here: If you use the FM-transmitter option, you’ll want the iKaraoke to be close enough to your tuner/receiver to get a good signal, but you’ll also want your microphone to be far enough away from the speakers to avoid feedback issues. Since the microphone and transmitter are separated by only three feet or so of cable, this can be a challenging proposition, limiting the usefulness of the FM-transmitter feature. Also, although the iKaraoke’s documentation claims stereo FM transmission, I was unable to get anything but a monaural signal using the built-in FM transmitter. In either connection scenario, you shouldn’t expect great sound quality from the included microphone; it’s adequate for casual use but not professional-quality.
Another drawback of the Griffin iKaraoke is that you can’t adjust the microphone’s sensitivity to fine-tune the mic—for example, to balance your sound levels. Although you can connect a pair of headphones to the iKaraoke’s line-out jack to eliminate feedback problems (creating your own private karaoke session), since that jack is a true line-level output, you have no control over volume levels. On the other hand, a useful feature of the iKaraoke is the ability to use it in conjunction with a public address system: just mute the iPod’s music, via the iKaraoke configuration menu on your iPod, and only the microphone output is sent out.
Griffin did an impressive job of packing so much functionality into such a small device. However, the gain in portability is offset some by difficulties encountered in trying to get the right balance of vocals and music without feedback and by a lack of a way to adjust the microphone sensitivity. Once you do have it configured, however, it works adequately and can provide a reasonably good karaoke experience.
Article Source: MacWorld Reviews
