Karaoke Feedback - Prevent the Speaker Howl

When your karaoke DJ equipment is limited by the physical space you have to set up in it is common to experience feedback. Feedback is that howling or shrieking sound that gets everyone clutching their ears. It's caused by your microphones picking up sound coming out of the speakers and then that sound gets amplified and comes back out the speakers and then it gets picked up by the microphone again and again until the loop is broken.

Feedback is an sound loop that every DJ wants to avoid. But when your venue is small, or when your equipment set up is fixed, feedback reduction can be a real thorn in your side. It may help to know the common causes of feedback:

• Someone points a live microphone at an amplified speaker
• The microphone and speaker are too near each other
• Wireless (omni-directional) mic signals are more likely to get picked up as feedback
• Two microphones get pointed together
• Lousy acoustics in the room (reflective surfaces like tile make echos)
• Lots of powered up equipment in a small space
• Turning up the volume on a mic too high

Obviously, rearranging equipment or changing the way people handle equipment is the solution to 95% of feedback. Do your best to make changes like:

• Place speakers in front of microphones and singers
• Point speakers away from microphones - one eighty is best, but any angle helps.
• Train your singers to bring mic close to their mouths when they sing so you can turn the volume down
• Teach your singers not to cup the microphone
• Don't let singers point the microphone at one another
• Turn off or mute unused microphones or speakers, especially wireless microphones
• Go to unidirectional microphones
• Improve the acoustics of the room (add carpet or sound absorbent materials)
• Use your equalizer to identify and dial out the problem frequency where feedback is occurring

If the above recommendations don't solve your karaoke feedback problems, you can always go with adding a feedback controller to your machine karaoke set up. A feedback controller is an affordable little gadget that automatically senses and filters out frequencies where feedback is developing in a live sound show.

If your karaoke feedback can't be mitigated by the rearrangement of your equipment, you can always control it electronically!