Microphone concern

[HowardBrazee]

We have a Karaoke machine that gets locked up at our Senior Living facility. Some medium quality wireless microphones are not locked up that include a base with 1/4" cables that plug into the Karaoke machine. The microphones are 2000's Audio model AWR6122U.

I'd like to have the ability to run kJams from my Mac and wonder if just buying a cable to convert the two 1/4" cables into the microphone input in the back of my iMac is safe. (I don't want to blow anything out).

I probably should save up for my own microphone (again to plug into my iMac), but have no idea what would be an affordable good choice.

So what advice could people give me here?

Thanks in advance.

[dave]

those mics are (probably) not pre-amped (powered), so you'll need a pre-amp on them, so you'll (probably) need a mixer or an amped input between the mics and the mac. like this

but keep in mind: going through the mac with your mics will cause unavoidable latency. a pro would never do that in a show, but you might tolerate it for yourself at home, YMMV.

what pros do is connect the mac's audio out and mics directly to a mixer, then to amp-speakers, leave the computer out of the loop for the mics.

[HowardBrazee]

So the only use of having a microphone connected to the Mac would be to announce singers and such.

Is there a cheap way to merge output from the Mac and microphone to my speakers? I very much doubt it, unless there are some cheap, acceptable mixers.

[dave]

So the only use of having a microphone connected to the Mac would be to announce singers and such.

that would be fine. but if you're getting a mixer, there's no point to using the mac audio input at all, just go into the mixer

Is there a cheap way to merge output from the Mac and microphone to my speakers?

as you said: look for a cheap mixer