In-Ears

[fooman]

Can anyone comment on a system for my band? We are a 5-piece, with 3 vocalists. We currently want IEM's mostly for our lead singer. She has a hard time hearing herself on stage in a loud gig and during practice. We'd like to be able to expand if needed as well so maybe I could use some IEM's (I drum) as well as the other backup singers in the band.

I'm not quite sure what to look for when shopping for a system.

[dropblacksky]

One thing I would look for as a feature is a built in limiting system. In ears can be scary if you don't have your own sound crew and you're relying on the random club monitor engineer...or worse, the FOH who ALSO has to do monitors because the club is small...on wrong turn of a knob and your ears can get blasted.

A lot of systems have this, but if you go for a low end model they probably won't....which, to me, is scary.

[theGeek]

I would look at galaxy audio IEMs

[jagalactic]

I've used in-ears for 7 or 8 years now. Start with a Shure rig. my psm400 is still going strong - get the kit that comes with transmitter, receiver and earphones. the psm200 is cheaper, but I haven't used it. I recommend the '400.

The earphones that come with the kit aren't that great, but they *do* work. Do not get carried away over hi-fi earphones until you get used to the rig. Most people upgrade later, if they stick with IEMs. In fact, the earphones are fairly delicate, and you'll have to replace them periodically. I started with Shure E1's, replaced them with more of the same, then Ulitimate Ears non-custom 2-ways, then ultimate ears full-custom 2-ways, and now 2-way custom phones from hearyourself.com (the best deal on 2-way full custom phones, and they sound excellent). You definitely get a better seal with the full custom earphones...

My recommendations:

* have her rehearse with it before she tries it at a gig. It takes some getting used to.
* I HIGHLY recommend wearing only one earphone. That allows the brain to combine the room sound with the monitor mix, and the monitor mix is not super critical. Wearing both ears requires a truly professional monitor mix, which is likely to not always happen. Initially I was afraid this would "ruin my stereo field" but that's hooey - it works great, and I almost never strain my voice.
* wearing both ears makes it very difficult to communicate, and in many cases, harder to sing well. If you're not working with a savvy professional crew, don't do it. And don't even think of doing a stereo monitor mix...
* Send a custom monitor mix to the IEM tranmitter, with her vocal plus a bit of guitar and/or keys - to help with pitch reference. Bass and drums are not handled well by entry level earphones, so avoid them (they're easy to hear with the open ear, anyway, AND they're not useful for pitch reference).
* If you can't do a custom mix, the Shure transmitters have a mode where you can send the generic monitor mix to the "left" input and a direct channel out of the vocal in question to the "right" input. In this mode, the pan knob on the receiver functions as a mix between the left and right inputs, but the mix is mono...which is ideal.
* All IEM systems have a builtin limiter, for liability and safety purposes. It is very important not to run the monitor send too hot from mixer to transmitter. The sound tech must avoid burying the input level meters on the transmitter, or the mix gets squashed beyond recognition. With IEM, turning up the master send doesn't make any difference anyway, because the receiver has a volume knob. The relative levels of the channel sends DO matter, though, because that's the mix.
* This is the voice of expensive experience speaking: do not keep your cell phone next to the IEM receiver, when it's turned on and the earphones are plugged in. You know that nasty digital interference sound that cell phones will induce into a land-line telephone? Well, it will blow out the drivers of your IEM earphones. That's why I had to replace my UE custom phones with hearyourself.com custom phones.
* FYI the earphones plug into the receiver with the same type of plug as ipod earphones. IEM earphones work great on ipods, and the good seal filters out background noise VASTLY better than noise canceling headphones. However, non-sealed (normal ipod) earphones DO NOT WORK for IEM applications. Without the seal, you can't hear well enough. The net is that any vendor's earphones will work with Shure's transmitters and receivers, so you're free to upgrade earphones at any time without replacing the electronics.

Cheers,
JG

[theGeek]

all of that is great advice!

[fooman]

What is the earbud's seal material made out of?

I have a pair of earbuds I use for everyday use at work and they have a rubber bud that seals to your ear pretty well and the freq response is great. Best pair of buds I've ever had, but they are a bit expensive for everyday buds at $60. I've never used any of the earbuds shure makes for IEM systems, but I'm curious if anyone has used earbuds make for everyday use with their IEM system?

Thanks for all the advice above!
Some of it is common sense, but some of it made me really think about what I need and what I want for my band. We have settled on the Shure PSM 400 series system because it seems fairly easy to start with one person and then expand with more receivers once we get some more cash. I plan on becoming very familiar with the system so I can tell the sound guy what to do at shows if he is one of the clueless guys who simply works faders =\

Thanks again! Any more advice and experience out there???

[jagalactic]

There are four common types of seal (five if we count "no seal").
* no seal is a non-starter
* rubber or neoprene seals
* "yellow foam" (though the Ultimate Ears foam seals are gray)
* Westone custom molds for non-custom earbuds
* Full custom earbuds

Sounds like you have some buds with the rubber/neoprene seals. My experience with those is they work at a desk, or on an airplane, but they suck for gigs, because I get sweaty and occasionally tug the cable accidentally. The seal tends to go bad halfway thru each song, and that's a royal pain. And the rubber seals wear out pretty quick. Next!

The "yellow foam" seals work well. The big catch is you need lots of spares onhand, because they don't last very long. Once they're worn out, they're as bad or worse than the rubber ones.

I've used all the options, settling on the foam until I had westone molds for my Shure E1 earphones (that model is discontinued, but westone makes molds for the current models too). I'll call this the semi-custom approach. These are a great option, and better than either of the non-custom seal options. These things last a year or two, but not forever (they harden over time and don't seal as well).

Full custom molded earphones are best, and have major advantages over the semi-custom approach. The main difference is that the full custom earphones fill up your entire ear, whereas the semi-custom only fill as much of the ear as the foam molds would fill. That means that the full custom earphones are the only ones that won't need to be adjusted at all. Interestingly, the full custom earphones are not rubbery, but more like acrylic. It turns out that the "fill the whole ear" approach does not require a tight "interference" fit. All of the full custom earphones have replaceable cables, and should last until you lose them or blow the drivers with a cell phone.

The first couple of times I had custom molds made, I had an audiologist make the molds. That'll probably cost you $50 plus the fabrication cost. With my latest pair from Hearyourself.com, I made my own molds, and it worked perfectly (you inject this epoxy-like stuff [provided by the vendor, made for ears] into your ear with a syringe, and spend 5 minutes wondering if it will be stuck in there permanently... ;-)

Having said all that, I still recommend starting with non-custom earphones and FOAM SEALS.

John

[jagalactic]

One more useful tidbit occurred to me:

After I blew a very expensive pair of custom phones from Ultimate Ears, I got 2-way replacements from Hearyourself.com which use the same drivers. Anyway, I got them to make me two lefts and one right. This way, I have a pair for ipod listening, plus I have a left-only for gigs (I'm a left ear kind of guy). So if I ever blow out that left ear on a gig, I have a spare...

Hearyourself.com was very nice about handling the special order, and I really recommend them above Ultimate Ears for custom work...including semi-custom molds (if they do that) and custom earplugs (I have a pair from them).

TTFN

[electropoet]

I use the sennheiser e300 set-up and like it a good deal better than the shure system I had...I believe it was to 400...but could have been the 200...I don't remember.

Regarding the set-up...I think it depends greatly on what you need...for me...I'm kinda of a one-man looping show so I have to do most of the mixing on stage and I have configured my mixes (both in stereo) to suit my needs...but I can see, in a more traditional band set-up, how that might not be advisable. A mono mix works just fine.

But I can say that wearing only one ear piece should only be done at your singers peril. There is a lot of hype and debate...but wearing one ear piece is a bad idea in a loud setting unless you want to end up deaf. I agree with all that the other poster said...talking and communicating is hard...hearing the crowd is hard...getting use to IEM's is hard...not hearing the room mix is makes it hard...but the simple fact is...that in a loud room your singer will continue to crank her receiver until her vocal is heard clearly over all the other noise...unfortunately...at these decibel levels, the ear can be damaged rather quickly.

It is certainly something that one must consider.

[jagalactic]

...But I can say that wearing only one ear piece should only be done at your singers peril...

Although in-ears can provide some hearing protection, that's a separate issue from my reasons to recommend monitoring in one ear -- namely that it's vastly easier to get a usable monitor mix that way. YMMV, but my main gig is an 8 piece dance band that does mainly weddings and corporate events with four monitor mixes (one of them mine), and the "getting a usable in-ear mix" problem is very real, as is the need for easy verbal communication during the gig.

Having sort-of poo pooed this issue, I will say that I try to have the drummer on my left, since I use in-ear on the left side, for additional hearing protection. There will always be people who play at dangerous stage volumes...but cut it out, OK?! Listeners don't like it either.

[fooman]

This is a damn good thread. Thanks for all the help everyone!

[Samc]

Originally Posted by jagalactic

* I HIGHLY recommend wearing only one earphone. That allows the brain to combine the room sound with the monitor mix, and the monitor mix is not super critical. Wearing both ears requires a truly professional monitor mix, which is likely to not always happen. Initially I was afraid this would "ruin my stereo field" but that's hooey - it works great, and I almost never strain my voice.

PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVISE! Every experienced Audiologist, ENT specialist, IEM user and monitor engineer will tell you that this is VERY dangerous for your hearing, and professional IEM manufacturers strongly advise against this practice. It is a fact that by using only one ear-piece, you will monitor louder......MUCH louder in fact, IEM's can produce higher dB levels inside the ear, than standard monitor wedges.

* wearing both ears makes it very difficult to communicate, and in many cases, harder to sing well. If you're not working with a savvy professional crew, don't do it. And don't even think of doing a stereo monitor mix..

Misinformation and/or ignorance, leading to incorrect use is the biggest problem with IEM's; The more isolation an IEM offers the user from ambient noise, is the lower the level that user will need (from the IEM) to hear properly, which is good for the users hearing, but this isolation may also make it difficult to communicate with band mates and the audience between songs. There are various ways around this problem like using ambient microphones on stage, but there are some bands that do not have any issues with this problem. The other problem of not being able to sing well with both buds in place however seem to stem more from user error, since this experience is counter to conventional experience.

And don't even think of doing a stereo monitor mix...

This statement need to be qualified...I happen to know more that a few bands that run only stereo mixes quiet successfully.

I would suggest reading this recent MIX article on the subject.

[Remoteness]

Sam,

Disinformation is a big issue in our industry and beyond; it's good to have someone step up, make a stand and point out the misnomers about it.

Thank you for the informative and corrective post!

[edwinhurwitz]

I have been using in ears for about 7 years now. I hate going back to wedges. The primary reason I love them is that I can keep my levels low, hear everything great and have no ear fatigue at the end of the night.

I use the Sennheiser IEM 300 G2 and it's a great system. If I am getting a send from the house monitor mixer, whether from a dedicated monitor mixer or from FOH, I get a mono mix and use the "focus" mode to blend in my bass as needed.

Otherwise, I bring a 24 channel split and run into a metric halo based setup that allows me to do a stereo mix for myself, the drummer (who controls his via Ableton Live with a Behringer BCF2000. If he wasn't on this rig, he probably would have quit the band by now) and the keyboard player. It works great, soundcheck involves about 10 minutes of tweaking the basic mix that is saved from night to night and off we go.

Where there are not enough monitor mixes to go around, I've even use the mono out of a FOH board and used the FOH mix and blended that with my bass.

Sometimes it can be hard to hear people talking, etc, but you get used to it and it's vastly preferable to dealing with wedges, etc.

DO NOT JUST USE ONE! I can't stress this enough because of the issues outlined above. Especially for a singer. You will inevitably turn up the in ear to match or exceed the volume of the stage and that is very very dangerous. You are way better off just getting some decent ear plugs if you want to hear the stage.

In any case, when we get to use our full monitor rig, everyone loves it. The FOH guy loves it because it cleans up the crap flying around on stage, he doesn't have to worry about 3 of the mixes (singing drummers can really screw up stage sound with a cranked monitor) and we help wire the stage for him. The band loves it because they can really hear very well and there's no ear fatigue.

Edwin
PS My drummer and keyboard player also love it because they go wired and the drummer works at Grace Design, so they use M902s!

[Mr P]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned (from my skim read):

If you don't need the in ear mix to be wireless, then don't. A wired in ear system will be cheaper, more reliable, and probably better sounding. The less RF being used on stage, the more likely it is to all work.

Of course, this likely isnt practical for singers, but for drummer's, keyboardists, etc it often is.

[Samc]

I actually would not recommend a generic system for the simple reason that most manufacturers of these systems are really just selling transmitters and receivers, with the actual IEM's (ear pieces) are treated as simple give away, add-ons. Some of these IEM's are nothing more than glorified consumer ear-buds that don't fit well and don't offer good acoustic isolation which in turn forces the user to monitor at a dangerous level.

Not saying they are all totally useless for pro use, but consider this; If you do not have the same fit and isolation every single time, (which is almost impossible with ear-buds), the sound cannot be consistent from show to show. Then there is also the hit or miss factor where fit is concerned, everybody has two ear canals that are unique in size and shape........the implication of this in relationship to generic buds should be obvious, you do not want to spend you time on stage trying to keep your ear-buds from falling out of your ears.

I would suggest that users buy the best custom-molded IEM they can afford, and as pointed out above most musicians don't even need wireless system and would in fact do better running with a wired system. If you do need wireless, then choose each individual component on your personal (long term) need and budget. I find that when possible, mix and match can allow you to get a system more tailored to your needs than going generic. For the ultimate in hearing security, (and if budget allows) I would also recommend a high quality brick-wall limiter across the mix which can be used with wired or wireless systems. There are some companies (DBX, Rane etc) that are now marketing special, in-ear processor boxes, and although I have not used any of them, they all seem to be chuck full of unnecessary processing stages and are more complicated than they need to be.....more bling, more ways to screw-up the sound and more ways to screw-up your hearing.

Anyway, you might want to check out products from these guys; Livewires, I've never used their products but I've heard a lot of good things about them, and their pricing for their pro IEM's is very reasonable and comparable with some overpriced consumer ear-buds.

[edwinhurwitz]

I have to say that I fully agree with Sam on this. When I finally went to a wireless system after having a wired system for years, I found the Sennheiser ear buds to be a huge step down and not worthy of the system at all. What I do like about them is that they sit flat in my ears and so I can wear them to sleep with pink noise from my ipod when I end up with a snoring hotel mate on the road.

I'm now using Future Sonics Atrios with Westone molds and it works out quite well.

I agree with the other posters who say to not bother with wireless unless you need it. It's way cheaper to get an inexpensive mixer and that way you can accept XLR or 1/4" inputs or whatever the monitor will send you. You can then also get a splitter to mix in your own instruments.

Works great!

Edwin

[nathanvacha]

just another chime-in on wearing both earbuds. buy earpieces that seal well or you're going to lose the whole point of inear monitors.

if you are not in a position of having a monitor engineer or your own mix system like an aviom or small mixer on stage, i wouldn't even bother with inear monitors -- you won't get the benefits, only the headaches.

I've just started mixing inears full time for a band and we'll roll with a split, separate console, 8 channels of compression (which is about to be doubled any time now), several ambient/stage mics, and several outboard effects, and still vocals and guitars for singers and guitarists coming out of wedges. I wouldn't recommend anything less, it will hinder the performance.

--oh, unless you get those new sensaphonics ears that have little mics and let you dial in some ambient sound. Those would be great for a singer: vocals only in their monitors and they're able to dial in some of everything else going on around them.