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I hate karaoke it's loud it's dumb and

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I'm already both of those things hey what the heck it's such a good intro but

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look it's not about me karaoke is beloved by millions of people including

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my kids so when my daughter asked for a karaoke machine for her birthday well

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what kind of father would I be if I said no the kind of father who didn't want to

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navigate a nigh impenetrable wall of AliExpress junk and air written review

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use to find a setup of reasonable price high quality and low complexity is a

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real challenge but as we dug deeper we found ourselves immersed in one of the

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most wholesome and dedicated communities on the web so if you're like me you may

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not love Koke but you may love rabbit holes so grab a shovel and a mining

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helmet and start digging with me but

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before we go it's time for the Segway to

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our sponsor Corsair their 3500x case is

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like a window into your soul thanks to its wraparound glass Aesthetics and

15
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support for Back to Front motherboards because if you're like us your soul is

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really just a bunch of PC components check it out today using our

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link here's my wants list the system needs to be easy enough for kids to

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handle ideally take advantage of speakers that I already own it should

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have as few proprietary components as possible and be reliable and repairable

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so nothing that's E-Waste the second that I open the box I would like it to

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have four inputs so that my kids can enjoy it with friends and family but if

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I have to settle for less then I will in the last 17 days I have learned far more

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about karaoke machines than I ever cared to we've come up with three solutions

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that meet Linus' criteria with varying levels of success but it wasn't easy at

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least on the English internet there is surprisingly little good information out

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there about karaoke machines even Reddit where there's a community for everything

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was kind of dead honestly the biggest problem though was the one requirement

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lonus didn't mention he didn't want to spend a fortune on this which pretty

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much eliminated a commercial grade setup with wireless microphones so lowering

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our Ambitions we picked up a Yamaha m6x it's a nice sturdy and compact mixer

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that has nice vocal effects that can go a long way to providing that karaoke bar

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feel and the mixer has virtually no noise and is relatively simple to use

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use for adults we'll get to that later first what mics did we get quality no

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offense to lonus and his kids is not that important for karaoke but what is

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is durability thankfully sure kind of nails both while we could have gone with

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the perennial favorite the sh sm58 we decided to save some money and go with

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the entry-level pga48 it's all metal sounds decent but it's hampered by some

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obnoxious handling noise that might take some practice to avoid you'll also need

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some practice hooking it up XLR C cables to plug this into the mixer qu in to RCA

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from the mixer to the AV receiver maybe some adapters some cable management

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products from LTC store.com by the time we've got all the accessories we need

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we're looking at a pretty hefty bill for our cable noodle salad down here and we

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don't even have any extras like mic stands yet but before we invest in those

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we want to listen to the system so let's just plug the mixer into the AV system

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plug our computer into the HDMI port on the TV and

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just kidding just kidding you thought he was going to do that the output coming

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from this mixer should not be fed into your typical home audio setup the quick

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explanation is that your home audio equipment is designed to play finished

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files that are leveled and compressed and stuff like that whereas the signal

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from microphones can have really loud Peaks that can actually damage your

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Hardware it might not be super likely but why risk it that's why we snagged

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this PA speaker from the office for testing it also gives us the option of

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running the music through the into the PA or we can have the vocals on

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the PA speakers with the music running through the home theater which will reduce the total number of cables but

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also make balancing levels a bit of a pain in the butt another benefit of the

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PA though is that we can move it to reduce the likelihood of feedback which

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is great but how are we going to get music into the speakers YouTube's a

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great place for tons of karaoke tracks but it has a few problems queuing stuff

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is a bit tedious and quality varies greatly and your favorite tracks might

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be ripped from your grasp at any moment if YouTube decid besides that they're

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not worthy also downloading from YouTube can

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be thankfully there are other platforms like

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iunes which is the best name ever or better yet karaoke nerds where you can

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find high quality karaoke tracks for purchase or streaming and you can even

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request karaoke versions of your favorite songs to be made that's pretty

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cool unless you're willing to tip for their services though you're going to be

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waiting a long time for your song to be karaoke fied but you should consider

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doing that because thanks to these folks the internet is full of bar emptying

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hits from bands like swans and Captain beefart is that I've never heard of them

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you've never heard of Captain Bart anyway I think it's time to show my kids

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I've spent more than I intended and we could have saved some money if we'd gone

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with cheaper stuff but the good thing about it is this is mostly Pro suumer

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grade audio equipment that should hold its value reasonably well let's try it

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out okay girls you know how sometimes someone gets a birthday present but

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everyone kind of shares it yeah yeah that's happen

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that means that you get to see

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first what's that what do you mean what's that maybe your older sister can

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tell you wow it's a video

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game what the got here hold take these

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okay what is it karaoke yeah do you guys want to try

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it say you're not going to try it

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John they're camera shy so I guess it's going to be me and Adam trying out the

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setups there's three different ones and I kind of wanted you guys to

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help me pick which one that's not great didn't you say you

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wanted karaoke what

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remember no that moment when the parent

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has a better memory for what the kid asks for for a birthday than the kid

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does yeah you did it was a while back

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all right get out of here

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I guess you get to hear me and Adam try them out let's go yes I've been

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broken I could let go I can't keep a

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straight face you know what it sounds great though yeah you're my

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Wonder remember when I said there were three options though let's talk about

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the all-in-one packages when you first look on Amazon you will be inundated by

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hundreds of options that are all variations of the same five or six products being sold by a myriad of

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alphabet soup drop shippers and from the research we did most of these systems

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fall short in one way or another the big one is just how proprietary so many of

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the wireless mics are but we think we may have found a good one we were turned

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on to the icario Shell S1 by a Reddit user named David _ PGH and he seems to

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have put the entire Reddit karaoke community on his back supporting them

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with endless knowledge and recommendations he responds to like

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every threat rad shout out David it's people like you that make this world a

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better place this really is the whole package it's a portable powered speaker

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with two wireless microphones and a place to store them a 10.1 in

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touchscreen running Android 13 that is pre-loaded with get this karaoke apps

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that makes sense right on the main menu we have YouTube which is actually just

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Mozilla Firefox but don't worry about that that just makes it better than being just YouTube and caraun which

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we'll talk about in a little bit while it only has two wireless inputs we can

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plug a wired mic into the back for three panels of audio along with auxiliary in

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and out HDMI out and we can run our own songs off of a USB drive the microphones

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sound great with strong directionality to prevent feedback very little latency

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great range unlike many karaoke singers and very little handling noise there's

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no cables to trip over and while you can still surprise yourself with how loud

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the thing is I don't have to worry about blowing up my home theater system when

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someone drops a microphone or messes with the settings of course there are

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downsides the components here they are not repairable replaceable or

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resellable so when the battery goes on these mics and they will they will be

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gone and unless we can access the bootloader on this Android tablet

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which I mean if any Community is going to do it it might be the karaoke

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Community they're crazy dedicated but you can't count on that let's try this

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thing out want it that way so that's the

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clean original mic mode and then we can go to karaoke hello W that's just a lot

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of Reverb that's a lot of Reverb I have a

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super um okay okay this one's called

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profession not professional but profession I want cartoon we got oh my

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God what's moner oh my God hello hello

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children the speaker quality on this thing not great it's loud it's

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acceptable between the mic and the speaker it handles your Voice better

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than it handles mine I wonder how much of that is to do with the speaker itself

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or if it's the microphon I imagine the microphones would usually be biased to

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be good across a broad variety of voices

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but feel them they are very light not a lot going on in here hey

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they they put the charging ring all the way around the base put them inol you

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just Chuck them in there and then and turn them off though because oh yeah cuz

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otherwise that'll happen but you don't have to worry about it happening to your speakers that's true

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you heard us mentioned caraun earlier it's really really cool an amazing

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service with a library of 61,000 plus tracks of highquality remakes of songs

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with accurate lyric timing adjustable background vocal levels key changing to

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suit your voice easy queuing of tracks and like 400 tracks for free just to

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test out in case you don't want to Shell out $10 a month for the subscription but

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honestly just paying 10 bucks for one night of karaoke that's that's kind of

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worth it this thing is honestly great and one of the coolest things is you can

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bring it to a party and be doing karaoke Within seconds with no one needing to be

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taught at $280 it's not cheap but it

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undercut the price of our quality DIY setup so yeah sure you could go with a

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cheaper all-in-one system but this

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actually a pretty compelling package there is a third option that Bridges the

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gap between an all-in-one and a DIY uh most in-one type setup if you will the

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one we have today is from soundtown but also there's like another company that

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makes the same thing I think it's kind of another drop Shippy situation but

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unlike other Solutions this has HDMI pass through which means it will work

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seamlessly with the rest of your setup and converting your signal to digital

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will lower the risk not eliminate it of damaging your AV setup so if you want to

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hook up to that instead of getting a dedicated PA speaker maybe try it at

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around 100 bucks this thing is a great deal coming with two wireless mics that

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don't sound half bad and if you want you can grab some cheap mics and plug them

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in via the quarter-inch jacks on the front sadly they're going to be on the

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same two channels whatever it should be okay

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you're all seeing the same song and thanks to convenient HDMI pass through

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this could be the easiest solution of any we've seen so far all right let's

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try it hey now you're an allar get your game on go play yeah so the quality is

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not the highest but it's simple you have the cables probably already and you just

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need a laptop there's no doubt in my mind that the Yamaha mixer blows away

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the other Solutions if I was going to host it and use it in my home 100% the

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Yama but this is for kids to use and I don't

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trust them to be able to deal with this

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when it does get messed up and also you could damage stuff with it just hot glue

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the buttons in place yeah and have fun

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reselling your Yamaha mixer I think it might be Sound Town population

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me the Quick Change double a batteries

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that's pretty appealing compared to some proprietary Battery Solution you can

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plug in more micro phones so it is adaptable and if maybe if you do keep

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the mixer for other reasons or you have another mixer you could split out and have two inputs anyways to your point if

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it was for me and it was something that I knew I was going to be there to configure I would absolutely go DIY yeah

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this is awesome this is great it sounds so much better and you're going to be

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able to use it for other stuff you could use it at your desk for streaming and

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stuff like that like with that said if you're kind of willing to spend the

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extra 300 bucks for like 50% of people in this world I would say this is a

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great option because you also get a speaker it's all one packed easy to use

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system it's pretty appealing if I was moving around or I was like Street

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busking look at this it's got the little like strap thing on it yeah comes with

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the strap too regardless of which setup works best for you we hope you guys

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learn something today like this message from our sponsor vessie the weather

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194
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you guys enjoyed this video maybe you'll enjoy I can't think of a more random

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Rabbit Hole we've ever gone down we'll get a video recommendation up there yeah

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it'll be a good one it'll be a good one go watch it dash cams sure