What's that in their ears??

R

radiocycle

New member
I looked at all the forums and couldn't really figure where to post this question; I hope it's OK here.

I see when we go out and listen to live music, most of the bands have some ear bud looking things jammed in their ears. What are they listening to anyway? Are these taking the place of on-stage monitor speakers these days? Is it a mix of instruments or only the vocals or just what each guy is playing, maybe?

Thanks for any replies,

radio
 
IEMs or in ear monitors. Yes, they are replacing wedges in many cases. A good IEM mix will have everything in it, mixed to the performer's requirements. A proper IEM mixing setup will allow each performer to have a custom mix. They require more detailed attention when building monitor mixes but the isolation allows monitor levels to be lower, and they clean up the stage sound substantially.
 
Many even do their own mixes now - much of the latest kit has these systems built in.

It's also nice for lowering the volumeI do sound for a band that are half and half. Two of the band have in-ears, and the other two use small speakers on the mic stands, or floor wedges. The trouble with them is that the mix has to be good, because they shut out the stage and audience sound - so if they lose a key instrument, it's a real issue. with wedges, you can always hear a bit of the next guys. You can even get many places that do glasses to do the moulds now (if you don't like the squidgy generic ones). They squirt the stuff into your ears, pull it out, make a mould and then glue your headphone driver into the personally moulded ear canal shaped bit. Some people just can't get on with them at all, and others like to have one in, one out.
 
rob aylestone said:
The trouble with them is that the mix has to be good, because they shut out the stage and audience sound
Click to expand...

I've never used them, but I've been told by someone who has that losing general stage and audience sound is not nice, and that a reasonably common practice is to set up another mike specifically to capture this and feed it into the IEMs.
 
It is necessary to take the time to fine tune a monitoring system with IEM's. Meaning you would want your own monitor mixer setup that could be used at all times in any venue.

Horrible things could happen if you trust a FOH engineer at a club to send a mix to someone using IEM's.
 
jimmys69 said:
It is necessary to take the time to fine tune a monitoring system with IEM's. Meaning you would want your own monitor mixer setup that could be used at all times in any venue.

Horrible things could happen if you trust a FOH engineer at a club to send a mix to someone using IEM's.
Click to expand...

Right. A complete IEM system includes a full mic package, XLR split, mixer, headphone amps and transmitters and receivers in addition to the IEMs themselves. With an analog mixer you leave it set, with digital you can store your mixes for recall. If you don't do all of that the results can be unpredictable. For larger shows they often just have the mixes on a USB stick and recall them on the venue's monitor console.
 
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