# CD's and Karaoke Machine's **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 28, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cds-and-karaoke-machines/257312 "2004-07-28T19:45:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dreamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@dreamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dreamer)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cds-and-karaoke-machines/257312/1 "2004-07-28T19:45:40Z")
Does anyone know if you can play a regular CD on a Karaoke machine? I know you can’t get the lyrics without the CDG but can you sing along to a CD with an mp3 on it? ---
**Author:** ![Demo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demo/32/8472_2.png) [@Demo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Demo)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2004, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cds-and-karaoke-machines/257312/2 "2004-07-28T20:04:21Z")
It depends on the model you get. After perusing [this page](http://www.acekaraoke.com/), it looks like there are models that definitely do play MP3 CDs as well as regular CDs and CDGs. ---
**Author:** ![sciguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@sciguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2004, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cds-and-karaoke-machines/257312/3 "2004-07-28T20:25:55Z")
One karaoke show I went to could not only play regular CDs, but the machine would also do some left-right channel manipulation to remove (or at least reduce) the vocals on the played song. IIRC, vocals are usually identical across the left/right channels of a stereo recording, while the music is not. Adding the channels afer inverting one cancels out most of the vocals. That was a professional karaoke setup, so I’m not sure how common that feature is.