Karaoke Revolution Specifics Unearthed

Thanks to GameSpy for their hands-on preview of Karaoke Revolution, Konami's PlayStation 2 title that uses the USB headset and "...requires you to match the rhythm and pitch for the vocals in a song" (although luckily for the tone-deaf among us: "Karaoke mode allows you to just kick it to a song without having to worry about performance.") This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all", from Mr.Mister to Avril Lavigne, and the previewer handily points out that "Not everyone can rock a guitar or a keyboard. Not everyone can dance... but almost all of us can sing (whether the results are appealing or not is another matter)."

Comments

Can you sing along with me on this tune?

[orthogonal]

This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"

Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...

Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?

35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).

But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.

Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).

And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).

I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.

And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.

A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.

But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.