Karaoke
Early karaoke machines were a single unit that played a cassette recording of a popular song (without vocals) through an amplifier. Incorporated into the amplifier was a microphone input with a basic reverberation sound effect to give the amateur singer’s voice a more studio-like quality. Later karaoke recordings took advantage of stereo channels by including a singer on one channel and only the backing music on the other. Consumers thus had the option of singing solo or with a vocalist to learn the words and melodic line, depending on the channel they selected. Technological advances and increased demand during the 1980s brought further innovations. Some machines had the capability of transposing the pitch of the music, the vocal input, or both, in an attempt to match the music to the singer’s vocal range. Other machines tried to suppress the vocal line of any recording but produced poor overall sound quality, making them generally unpopular.