Considering using in ears. Help

[wolfkeller]

So at this point I'm considering the idea of going in here something I've always been against. I'm tired of never been able to hear our singers back up singers and my guitar player I'm tired of relying on morons who call themselves soundman / monitor guys so I'm thinking maybe I should try this. The problem is I have absolutely no idea how this works. I use a wireless so I'm familiar with the basic concept of Wireless but I don't know what I would need. Do I need a separate mixer do I need this do I need that. I have no idea what would be a good brand without spending a fortune I use Line 6 stuff for my bases and vocal mics and it sounds great I like it I want something that simple but sounds good and I have a poopieload of inputs we have three singers across the front to back up singers a drummer guitar player base and I need to be able to customize the mix how do I do this? What do I need. Thank you for your help

 

[filmtex]

I took the liberty of punctuating your post so that there's some chance of getting an answer:

"So at this point I'm considering the idea of (going in here) something I've always been against. I'm tired of never being able to hear our singers, back up singers, and my guitar player. I'm tired of relying on morons who call themselves sound men/monitor guys, so I'm thinking maybe I should try this. The problem is I have absolutely no idea how this works. I use a wireless so I'm familiar with the basic concept of Wireless but I don't know what I would need. Do I need a separate mixer? Do I need this? Do I need that. I have no idea what would be a good brand without spending a fortune. I use Line 6 stuff for my bases and vocal mics and it sounds great. I like it. I want something that's simple but sounds good, and has a poopie load of inputs. We have three singers across the front including the two back up singers, a drummer, guitar player and bass player. I need to be able to customize the mix, how do I do this? What do I need. Thank you for your help."

You're welcome. (BTW-I'm really not trying to be snarky or a jerk, please take the help in the spirit which it is intended-the clearer your post, the more help you'll get IMHO.)

Now for an answer. You need to figure out if your mixer has multiple monitor/aux feeds and/or get a dedicated monitor mixer. With multiple feeds from your FOH board, just designate one (or more) to your IEM monitor system. If you don't have that capability, then you have a somewhat more difficult set up. What board are you using to drive your PA?

 

[morgansterne]

If you hate relying on sound techs for your monitor mix, iems might be a problem. I can get away with a poor wedge mix, but a poor Iem mix is worse. If you're at dozens of different venues all the time with bad sound checks, you can't count on the FOH person.
We use the same sound guy and PA all the time , but I still use a phone app (xair q) to control my monitor mix. A lot of digital mixers have this option. You'll need the cooperation of the sound techs to get their permission and wifi password for their mixer. It's way better than piping up five times a night to say "Brian, more backup vocals, please".

More info would be better. What pa equipment does your band currently own? What do you bring to shows? Would other bandmates be interested in iems also?

I love mine, they are saving my hearing . A worthwhile investment even for a weekend warrior schlub like me.

 

[wolfkeller]

Appreciate your help, it was a quick voice text post. We don't have a board, we tour nationality, we have nothing to do with FOH or what they have. We rely on whatever the venue has. We have a wireless rack for our mikes so I can mount it in with those. That is about all I know. We have 6 members onstage so eventually we all want IEMs . For now I'm worried about me.

 

[wolfkeller]

If you hate relying on sound techs for your monitor mix, iems might be a problem. I can get away with a poor wedge mix, but a poor Iem mix is worse. If you're at dozens of different venues all the time with bad sound checks, you can't count on the FOH person.
We use the same sound guy and PA all the time , but I still use a phone app (xair q) to control my monitor mix. A lot of digital mixers have this option. You'll need the cooperation of the sound techs to get their permission and wifi password for their mixer. It's way better than piping up five times a night to say "Brian, more backup vocals, please".

More info would be better. What pa equipment does your band currently own? What do you bring to shows? Would other bandmates be interested in iems also?

I love mine, they are saving my hearing . A worthwhile investment even for a weekend warrior schlub like me.

We don't bring PA we use whatever the house has. Yes, they will all probably want to have it as well. Looked at the Shure 1000...$5200??? I don't think so.

 

[morgansterne]

Yeah they get super pricy. I've managed with cheapo carvin em900 (plus different earbuds) but it's not up to everyone's standards!

 

[Meyatch]

You need some way of getting all your inputs to a mixer you control, and to the house sound.
It could get pretty complicated to explain all this, but I’ll sum up and you can decide if you want to hear more.

You will need:
Someway to split all the xlrs coming from stage. We have a breakout box the drummer made

A mixer, preferably a digital mixer. We have a Mackie dl32r. it will take up less space, and be way easier to use for doing individual monitor mixes, you can control them with iPhones, and you can rack it with the wireless mics, and wireless iem transmitters.

Once you are racking all that, you probably need a bigger rack.

Once you have all that, you are ready for your iem transmitter, receiver, and earbuds.

I have the shure psm-200 (I think, they don’t make it anymore) and some custom mold earbuds.

If you are all about doing it we can talk more specifically about what you need, but honestly you are not in the best situation to start using Iems

 

[wolfkeller]

You need some way of getting all your inputs to a mixer you control, and to the house sound.
It could get pretty complicated to explain all this, but I’ll sum up and you can decide if you want to hear more.

You will need:
Someway to split all the xlrs coming from stage. We have a breakout box the drummer made

A mixer, preferably a digital mixer. We have a Mackie dl32r. it will take up less space, and be way easier to use for doing individual monitor mixes, you can control them with iPhones, and you can rack it with the wireless mics, and wireless iem transmitters.

Once you are racking all that, you probably need a bigger rack.

Once you have all that, you are ready for your iem transmitter, receiver, and earbuds.

I have the shure psm-200 (I think, they don’t make it anymore) and some custom mold earbuds.

If you are all about doing it we can talk more specifically about what you need, but honestly you are not in the best situation to start using Iems

Yeah, I definitely won't be doing any of that. Appreciate your candor. What do the big boys do? I can't see big time bands doing all that.

 

[Meyatch]

Yeah, I definitely won't be doing any of that. Appreciate your candor. What do the big boys do? I can't see big time bands doing all that.

We are doing all that, plus the house sound is run off the digital mixer also.

I don’t really know specifics, but if big name acts are running in ears, they are either trusting someone else to control their mix, or doing something very similar to what I said.

 

[Meyatch]

Big name bands could probably also put in their rider that a digital mixer of their preference is set up, or whatever.

You could let the house guys control your mix, but you already said you aren’t happy with the job they are doing. I’d rather have no monitors than a bad in ear mix.

 

[lfmn16]

What do I need. Thank you for your help

You could start with the search engine, there are many good threads about this very topic.

If find that searching before I post helps me to ask better questions and to better understand the answers.

 

[wolfkeller]

You could start with the search engine, there are many good threads about this very topic.

If find that searching before I post helps me to ask better questions and to better understand the answers.

You know a lot of guys will ask or they'll suggest that somebody search for existing threads but a lot of times the threads that they find are older threads and people who have questions want to be able to ask questions and get responses and you tend to not get that from a thread that's 3 years old or more. Either way I appreciate everybody's input here I am definitely not doing all of this I'll just have to deal with it because our set up being a tribute band with the stage show takes anywhere from 2 to 3 hours to set up and there's no way in hell I'm going to sit in Monkey around with this stuff when we're lucky to get a decent soundcheck half the time

 

[Meyatch]

You know a lot of guys will ask or they'll suggest that somebody search for existing threads but a lot of times the threads that they find are older threads and people who have questions want to be able to ask questions and get responses and you tend to not get that from a thread that's 3 years old or more. Either way I appreciate everybody's input here I am definitely not doing all of this I'll just have to deal with it because our set up being a tribute band with the stage show takes anywhere from 2 to 3 hours to set up and there's no way in hell I'm going to sit in Monkey around with this stuff when we're lucky to get a decent soundcheck half the time

If your issue is the amount of time it would take to set it up, what I outlined would streamline your process. It would be quite a bit of money, and time to get it all going, but once it’s set up, it will be very consistent from show to show. One of the benefits of iems.

 

[s0c9]

Yeah, I definitely won't be doing any of that. Appreciate your candor. What do the big boys do? I can't see big time bands doing all that.

Heck yeah they do.. and with far more complexity in many cases.
I can assure you that this type of configuration is NOT limited to the big boys.

I've been a busy weekend warrior for the last 5 yrs. My last band (of 4 yrs) had an IEM rack, with an X32 rack (there are other digital console choices), a 16-ch splitter snake and our IEM wireless units (Sennheiser G3) housed in it.

Depending on the venue, we do one of the following:

• Hook all our mics into OUR splitter snake - one leg is permanently connected to the X32 Rack - then hook the other end/leg up to the House snake, or
• Hook all our mics into the House snake and took their split and fed it to our splitter snake.

We have an external router (archer C7) connected to it that uses 5 Ghz band only - due to proximity on stage and minimal interference.

Basically, once configured, it's plug n play.. The X32 settings change minimally from gig to gig and each band member can control their own IEM mix via tablet or iDevice.
Once you hook up the mics, DI's etc. It's power up and go.
FWIW - The new Soundcraft UI24R (another digital console) uses a web interface, so it is operating system independent and only requires a browser.

SETUP TIME ??? 5 mins
COST: NOT cheap !!

What this does is keeps us COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT of ANY FOH mix, and gives us FULL CONTROL over our IEM MIXES !
They can do what they want at FOH, and it has ZERO impact on MY IEM mix.

Here's a pic of our setup flow.

PIC of the RACK .. it's PRETTY SMALL !! The splitter is mounted in the back, but I don't have a pic handy.. And remember, we're not even regional!

 

[rockinbilly]

You need some way of getting all your inputs to a mixer you control, and to the house sound.
It could get pretty complicated to explain all this, but I’ll sum up and you can decide if you want to hear more.

You will need:
Someway to split all the xlrs coming from stage. We have a breakout box the drummer made

A mixer, preferably a digital mixer. We have a Mackie dl32r. it will take up less space, and be way easier to use for doing individual monitor mixes, you can control them with iPhones, and you can rack it with the wireless mics, and wireless iem transmitters.

Once you are racking all that, you probably need a bigger rack.

Once you have all that, you are ready for your iem transmitter, receiver, and earbuds.

I have the shure psm-200 (I think, they don’t make it anymore) and some custom mold earbuds.

If you are all about doing it we can talk more specifically about what you need, but honestly you are not in the best situation to start using Iems

Meyatch is doing exactly what we did.
Splitter on stage.
Mixer on stage that anyone, who wants to, can access.
I also have a Shure PSM 200, which works fine for me.
Good custom molded in ears, I have a pair of Alien ears triple driver extended low end.
My only complaint with using IEM's is the feeling of separation from every one, band, and audience.

 

[pcake]

big name bands use their own sound guys, and so do some medium guys.

 

[Scottkarch]

s0c9 has the drawing you want to research.

All the big local/regional bands I'm seeing lately are ALL doing roughly the same thing.

• bringing their own mixer for IEMs and managing it themselves.
• Either providing their own splitter OR more and more stages are supplying a splitter you can tap off of.
• some bands even only feed a LR FOH feed and they have their own sound guy that knows their band and songs. house FOH just handles volume and overal EQ for room.

A bad IEM mix is worse than a bad wedge/stage mix.. but a great IEM mix is better IMO than a great wedge.

The nice thing about having your own mixer for IEMs is you can keep everything dialed in and your setup is as simple as plugging things in and zeroing your input levels so they are the same.. once you have your input gain/levels set to 0 at each location... your in ear mix is done.. aside from any small tweak. After getting things plugged in, I rarely have to change more than 1-2 level in my IEM.. and I do it with an ipad off to the side of the stage.

I'm the master of my own domain... so to speak.

There are lots of digital boards to choose from. Mackie DL series, Soundcraft UI series, Beheringer has a number of models.... that's just a start. You can each manage your own IEM mix with a phone/tablet depending on the unit.

• Getting a quality multi driver set of IEMs is critical.
• Getting a stereo vs mono mix can really help a lot.. we are mono and it's fine.. but stereo would be better.
• if going wired is an option you can save MANY hundreds by using a headphone amp and go wired IEMs. Otherwise I'd look at wireless at $800 or higher.... each member.
• We have a 4 channel wired beheringer headphone amp for $100 total.

Jayme Lewis from thebassist.net has a great youtube video I just saw yesterday and there is a lot of good information on the why and how of IEMs.
@jaymelewis



I'd say you need your own hardware or don't try it. You will probably need:

• Mixer
• Splitter
• transmitter/recievers
• IEMs

 

[rafitoprtx]

That's normal this days. First i struggle with not know what's my tone in the pa because overdrive sounds weird in the in ears but a fix it with a cab sim. Now i don't want to use an amp anymore. I have a combo with pa amp in it for when i want on stage monitoring.

 

[Scottkarch]

.........I appreciate everybody's input here I am definitely not doing all of this I'll just have to deal with it because our set up being a tribute band with the stage show takes anywhere from 2 to 3 hours to set up and there's no way in hell I'm going to sit in Monkey around with this stuff when we're lucky to get a decent soundcheck half the time

One of the great things about your own hardware and a splitter is you spend near ZERO time for your monitoring setup and SoundCheck. I'd be shocked if any location would batt an eye at using a splitter.

 

[Kevan Campbell]

The group and artist that I play with has a setup quite similar to what most everyone here has been describing. We bring along our own dedicated IEM mixer (I think it's an X-32?), individual wireless systems and a snake. From here we're able to control our own personal IEM mixes, and we run tails out to the venue's snake or system as directed by the resident soundman/soundwoman. We have total control over our own monitor mixes, don't require any wedges onstage that could muddy up the room, are completely self-contained and consistent, and don't have to rely on a soundperson for our onstage sound or mixes (we all are taught how to adjust our own mix on our mixer).

It's a big investment and learning curve upfront but the consistency and reliability is totally worth it! However, it's a good idea to also keep in mind that many first-time IEM users feel a perceived isolation before they become acclimated to the system. This can be helped by placing some "room mics" in your mix so you don't feel like you're playing music in a vacuum, and I've not yet met a guitarist who uses IEMs that didn't have some adjustment period of hearing their tone differently (through IEMs) than they're used to (right next to their amp "live").

Per systems, I used to run a new Shure PSM300 with the upgraded beltpack reciever and it worked wonderfully (only reason I sold it was that my current gig provided the IEM systems so I sold my Shure to the artist I used to play for). If you have the money, custom IEMs are totally worth it but I still keep my six year old Shure 215's with me (in case something happens to my custom IEMs) and they're still working just fine!