Monitoring with multiple headphones?

[flight]

We have recently formed a Christian contemporary band and have had some great practice sessions but we are running into a problem with one of our members who is deaf in one ear

The problem is he is constantly going around turning up the volume on all the amps claiming we're not loud enough. I am looking for a way to distribute the outputs from 5 amps to 5 headphones so that he can turn up his headphones as loud as he wants without the rest of us going deaf.

Being a newbie in the recording/mixing stage I could really use some help. Is there a relatively inexpensive way to do this?

This is a listing of our amps

Fender Passport 250 (4 mics & Keyboard)
Peavey TNT (Bass)
Two Crate GX65's (Electronic drums)
Crate 4 Ch PA head (guitars)

Will I need a mixer? Or is there some kind of headphone distribution box with 5 or more inputs and outputs available? If there is a distribution box, what would be the effect of running splitters from the amps/speakers to feed the headphones?

One last question, do "open ear" headphones allow you to hear outside sounds as well as sound from the headphone speakers?

Thanks for any help!

John

 

[Hard2Hear]

The Behringer Powerplay Pro has a main in and a seperate sub-in for each headphone channel. And it's cheap. It has 4 or 5 outs, I don't remember. Anything more than what this does (as in a monitor mixer) and you're talking lots of $$.

H2H

 

[octoruss]

And to follow up on your second question, open ear phones do allow more sound in from the outside environment. Be careful, though, when using these while recording that you don't get bleed from the headphones into your mic.

 

[zekthedeadcow]

but having spent the past few years in a christian rock band. . . you are going to run into problems when you play at places that don't have good monitoring. . . which are most of them. He's going to have to get used to not hearing you and turning up isn't the answer. infact even with monitoring (atleast in rock) it's harder to hear at shows than practice because of the openness and the greater spacing between instruments. You might want to get him a good in-ear monitor for shows and a small pa system to just run monitors on the road so you will always have them

 

[Seanmorse79]

Strangely enough, I also play in a Christian Rock band, and our drummer also has hearing problems (wierd, eh?). We use a Mackie 1604 mixer for everything (it's an 8 piece band including 3 keyboards - a sound guy's nightmare

We just did an outdoor gig, and we used another band's setup. They had one of these sitting on a mic stand and pointing at the drummer, nicely tucked between the tom and hihat.
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=020613090134064118142074676350/search/g=live/detail/base_id/39276

Long story short, he was escatic and could finally hear everything. Plus, being able to adjust his own active monitor volume was a huge plus. We've got one on order now.

I'm not familiar with the Passport, but if worst came to worst, you could get a cheap 6 channel mixer (80 bucks tops) and run it to this (I'm fairly sure) without need for an additional amp to drive it.