J. Lo jostles with Rafi for karaoke space

So your bathroom brings out the Kishore Kumar in you and given a chance, you feel that the talent hunt finalists would be no match for your singing prowess.

If only there was a way to find out.

Help could be at hand with a new karaoke system that not only stores 1,800 songs to sing along to, but rates the user’s singing skill as well. Consumer electronics giant LG has just launched NKS (Next Gen Karaoke System), its range of “professional” karaoke models that also double as home-theatre systems.

The song selection comes in two categories ? Hindi (1,300 songs) and English (500 songs). Hindi hits range from Mohammad Rafi to Sonu Nigam and Geeta Dutt to Alka Yagnik. The Western spread includes music from Frank Sinatra to Coldplay and Aretha Franklin to Jennifer Lopez.

“You name a hit and it’s here,” claims Jiten Chawla, an LG dealer. At the Camac Street outlet, families stepping in for their Puja purchases are being given demos of the karaoke system. “And then it becomes hard to make them let go of the microphone.”

The idea, for LG, is to cause a stir in the segment with a novel product. “The audio industry has become stagnant and the manufacturers must share the blame for not coming up with anything exciting,” offers Sanjiv Jain, audio-visual product group head for LG. “This is our attempt at creating something exciting.”

NKS has four models ranging from Rs 10,990 to Rs 27,990. The higher-end models come with a 5.1 speaker and sub-woofer set-up and the costliest model sports a set of tallboy speakers. The software ? backing tracks to sing along to ? is provided on DVD, along with a songbook to choose the tracks from. The players also work like home-theatre systems, playing audio, video and MP3 CDs and DVDs.

“You can change the tempo and pitch of the song to suit the user as well as turn on the original singer’s voice to hear how the song was actually sung,” explains Jain. LG plans to offer regional fare in the next three months, including Bengali hits.

“Since the launch three weeks back, we’ve seen an interest from everyone ? college kids to aspiring singers and families which want to liven up their parties with music,” Jain adds.