Guitar Hero dudes team up for Singtrix, hope to make your singing less terrible
If there's one theme running through the work of Kai and Charles Huang, it's the notion that an utter lack of musical ability shouldn't be enough to keep you from realizing your rock and roll fantasies. The team behind Guitar Hero have joined forces once again with the guys behind Drumscape, a sit-down arcade simulator that was formerly incorporated into the wildly success music game series. This time out, things are decidedly less competitive. No one's keeping track of the score, instead, Singtrix is more of a party box - an all-in-one karaoke machine that can, among other things, make you a less terrible singer.
The system features a mic and a (relatively) compact 40-watt, 2.1 speaker with a built-in woofer. The box has some 300 different vocal effects styled after different genres and musical era, and standard stage effects like reverb and delay. There are also three levels of pitch correction, which are likely the biggest selling point for those who might otherwise be mortified to stand up front of a crowd, mic-in-hand. And this is 2013, so the company's got a tie-in app for iOS, Android and the Kindle Fire, naturally, which features more than 13,000 songs and lyrics for the full karaoke experience. There's also 3.5mm jack on the box, so you you can plug your device right into the speaker.
The whole system runs $300, a price that includes the above, an additional microphone and a tablet holder. It's certainly not the cheapest karaoke box we've seen around, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one with as many different vocal settings, including a few that may actually give you the courage to sing a Barry White song at the office of a tech blog. The Singtrix guys will be demoing the box today at Expand in NYC. Come ready to sing some Freddie Mercury with the Engadget team.
