As you can see, the Sega Mega-CD Karaoke Unit and the microphone I repaired earlier are both still working nicely. It is your lucky day, you have a mute button. My neighbours may have a different opinion!

I’ve connected it to my Mega Drive Model 1, Mega-CD Model 1 and 32X setup. There are quite a few pieces of equipment involved, particularly when you count the power adapters. Four of them for this arrangement! I hope you’ve got a reasonably large power board handy.

The Karaoke Unit sits between the Mega-CD audio output and the stereo system, adding microphone mixing and effects. The Mega-CD itself supports CD+G discs, which carry simple graphics alongside the music, making them suitable for displaying karaoke lyrics.

I’ve made a disc specifically for the experiment using MP3+G files and Power CD+G Burner 1.4.6 under Windows XP. With the finished disc inserted, the Mega-CD displays the karaoke graphics while the music plays. Naturally, I couldn’t resist singing along.

The accessory has quite a collection of controls, including key adjustment, echo, chorus, microphone balance and voice cancellation. There are connections for multiple microphones, which is fantastic if you can find another person willing to make a terrible noise with you.

I did notice a hum through one of the speakers, so the audio circuitry might eventually need some attention. The voice cancellation wasn’t especially impressive during my experiments either, and I managed to produce some rather unpleasant feedback while playing with the controls.

The repaired Sega microphone is still working nicely, at least. It had given me some trouble previously, so it’s good to have it back in service for this demonstration.

The second video is a longer karaoke test featuring a mixture of grunge and punk tracks. The CD+G graphics work nicely, and the Mega-CD provides the backing music while I do my best to accompany it. Some of the vocal effects are rather entertaining too, although I think I’ll leave the professional singing to somebody else!

Running a proper CD+G disc is considerably more pleasant than relying on the accessory’s voice cancellation to remove vocals from an ordinary audio CD. The whole setup works rather well, especially considering how old this hardware is.

I really wish my Karaoke Unit wasn’t boxed so I could leave it displayed alongside the Mega Drive and Mega-CD all the time. What can you do!

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