Great vid Nick! Just to mention, sometimes even if there are wedges on stage, there’s no xlr or trs jack connected to it since it may not be an active speaker and there’s gonna be a speakON connector instead
Great video. You guys might want to make a video specifically on HOW to create an in-ear mix. My challenge as a FOH operator in a church is trying to explain to volunteer talent how to set up their mix. These people typically have no experience with a sound board. I hand them a tablet to set the mix on their individual bus output, give them a quick overview on how it works, and then facepalm as I watch them create the most screwed up mixes...
I'm not bashing on musicians. Please understand, I'm not talking about pro or even semi-pro performers here. In a mid-sized church, the talent can be very novice. They have never given a moments though to a mix. While I do not play an instrument, I do work with our musicians one on one to understand what they need from me, and vise versa. It is frustrating when you tell them repeatedly to set their vocal or instrument to a level that is clear and full, and THEN bring the necessary components of the band under it.
Kevin Gerhart Actually that's exactly what you're doing. I'd expect a little more from someone who goes to church, and until you learn to play an instrument in front of a live audience maybe you should go humble yourself. Free advice from a semi-professional musician.
Re-reading my initial post, I admit my comment sounded somewhat arrogant. That was not my intention. It sounds like Pedro might have issues with his FOH guy, or has in the past. In my experience, conflict between the band and the sound guy is fairly common. I would like to think that is NOT the kind of sound guy that I am. I honestly try to bridge the gap between the stage and the board. I work closely with our talent so that they have what they need. We are a team, and their success is my success. However, we have had in-ears for the last 2 years. I've led workshops on in-ear technique. I've seen the arrogance of talent that completely ignore my advice, and then complain that they can't get a good mix. Pedro, this isn't worth fighting about. I do respect the talent of our musicians. They do a great job in a very visible and unforgiving environment. But I do feel at times, they don't listen to my expertise. As I said, not worth fighting about. It is just one guys opinion.
I do listen to my engineer and expect them to tell me how my instrument should sound for where we are performing/recording. With that said, not everyone is at YOUR level, you have to cater to people sometimes and teach them more than once, you said yourself they are novice performers, put yourself in their shoes, were you good at what you do right away? Not a fight, another way to look at your frustration. We've all been new at something.
When I was asking advice about in-ears, a friend of mine told me that he learned the expensive way that most people will never tell you that your ears change shape, and that paying for custom fit monitors are not something that will work for you forever.
I would be careful saying that you can just unplug a wedge and put that signal into your ear rig. If they are powered wedges then that will work..but if you do that with passive wedges (plugging out of the amp rather than the direct Aux feed) you will possibly destroy your system. Not trying to nitpick... I just don't want anybody to blow their headphone amp or in ear system.
I may have not worded that like I meant it. What I was trying to get across was if you go into a venue you've never been in before and see that there are wedges on stage ( assuming they work of course ) then you know that you should be able to get an in-ear mix. I didn't mean to just unplug the wedge and plug the cable into your system. You would still need to properly plug into your rig. Sorry if that came across incorrectly. Take care, Nick
Perfect explanation. I am amateur singer with low budget, I have a DJ mixer and two wireless microphones I want to use my MEE audio M6 PRO in ear monitors as a singer. Can give tips, advices or any video how can use them to sing to avoid force my voice and sing louder. Thank you
John Smith you’d be surprised that in a band rehearsal or live situation, due to other excessive noise source, you will struggle to hear your drums, particularly starting from the bass drum so bare in mind with how you will be drumming in the future. Oh and protect your ears 🙂
Like Shaymen said, you'd be surprised. Every time I play live, I end up completely worn out because I end up playing twice as hard to hear what I'm doing, and when I get home I'm practically deaf. That's even with wedges on-stage, which are almost always muddy and horrible. In-Ear is significantly better.
One thing that's very important to consider is latency of any wireless setup and this is especially important for singers. The problem with monitoring your own voice is that the natural the distance from your mouth to your ear is constant and if your monitoring sound latency doesn't match that, it will sound wrong. One millisecond problem causes the apparent audio source to be off by 30 cm. I'm not a singer but I've found that if my voice is delayed more than 6 ms in the monitors it messes my mind so much that I can no longer even speak normally and I prefer 3 ms or less latency. I would expect singers to be even more picky about this.
Great point, would be good to understand this more. I wonder if singers have the same issues with small delays using a stage monitor+FOH setup in larger venues?
@@teejayausmusic If I've understood correctly, most singers have already switched to in ear monitors (often just called in-ears) and you have practically zero acoustic delay there so any delay in the system is usually caused by wireless setup. If you get vocal feedback directly from your bodypack instead of going through the stage mixer you'll get much less delay, practically none.
That's all in the ability of your mixer. If you have only 1 monitor send available, everyone will have the same monitor mix, so there will be compromises in that mix. A headphone distribution amp will help to adjust the individual volumes of each headphone monitor.. If you have multiple "sends" available on your mixer, use can use a separate send for each monitor, and dial it in for each individual. Or, you could use a splitter to send the input signals to two separate mixers: one for FOH and another for monitor mixes. So.... How much do you have to spend?
Im not sure if anyone will reply but someone pls take time to answer this ( i have little knowledge with these) I thought in ear monitors are used to hear your band perfectly, what i meant by that is so that u can hear all their volumes equally and in that case u would know wether to play louder or softer. For anyone who will answer thanks!
I know it's been a while, but... You don't need to hear the entire band. IEMs are somewhat as stage monitors, you just ask for what you need to hear in order to play correctly. Let's say you're in a worship band that had 3 vocalists. There's no need to have all of them in your Aux, just the lead. Or if the keys just provide ambience, there's no need to crank them up in your IEMs. One way to get a good FOH ambience is to have a flat response condenser capturing the live sound and throwing it back to the IEMs as background. This way you can have a feeling on whether you should play harder or smoother.
I think he is just playing over something already recorded because that room is not sound-treated and there are no overheads near the drums. You don’t put overheads so distante because you would hear too much of the room reflections.
How would set up in ears as a musician who travels and usually plugs into another persons mixer during an event? I want in ears, but I’m wondering.. Would I be able to bring my receiver everywhere I go and plug it into a venues monitoring system or mixer ?
Hi, Florence! Our team would be glad to look into IEM options with you. When you have a moment, please give us a call at (800) 222-4700 or email us at sales@sweetwater.com. You may also visit www.sweetwater.com/about/contact Thanks for the message!
Hey great video as usual. I play guitar and sing. Can you advise on an in ear system solution for guitar and vocals at the same time? So i don't have to rely on monitors for my vocals? My stage is generally really quiet UNFORTUNATELY and of course i want my guitars loud so i can have a little more dynamics in my playing and singing. Dont care if its a mono system or not P.S. I REALLY DONT WANNA SPEND A MILLION DOLLARS... LOL
Man i've been reading about this stuff cause i want to protect my ears when i play guitar but all videos are so confusing and talk about a lot of excessive gadgets, i'm just looking for something to protect my ears.
Not a word about hearing protection in case of feedback? That’s the reason I watched this, in the hopes of finding out what’s important. With IEMs, if squealing or rumble suddenly get loud, it can be painful or even cause permanent loss of hearing. With floor wedges you can cover your ears or turn away from speakers, but with IEMs you have to rip both of them out of your ears instantly or it’s too late. So how to prevent that? What systems have good, built-in protection? I’m asking for hobby and semi-pro bands without great mixing desks or trained people to ring things out properly. Not to mention surprises nobody can prevent, such as cables coming disconnected and causing massive grounding-related hum and such.
Very true ! It happened to me and I don’t want to experience that any more. First, you should be able to make your band sound good without any need of these devices (still useful though), a lot musicians sound like s**t cause they are isolated. Dry sound first !
Good point because the foh sound guy is totally NOT the guy to trust mixing headphones. You will need to add a limiter in-line if you’re brave enough to do that. Ideally you would have a band split for running your own monitor mixes.
sometimes when I drum I can't hear the other instruments especially if I'm by myself and my backing track is coming from a speaker and I lose time because I can't hear a thing. do drummers use these for backing tracks sometimes or am I not talented 😂
EricZulic I had a Paiste Rude 18” crash & when I’d hit that thing hard, I’d lose everyone else for a couple seconds. Finally started wearing good earplugs & three some tape in the cymbal 🤣 But no, it’s easy to lose the instruments every now & then & can be a little nerve wracking when you’re playing live.
Most commonly heard complaint with these seems to be sound quality. I'm a little unclear as to how much of this is caused by the earphones that are included with the system. If they have a standard headphone jack, does using a higher quality earphone improve the sound quality a lot, or a little? Also, how much does an additional pack cost for additional band members?
teerexness The quality of Earphones/in-ears play a huge role in sound quality. It's like using a pair of apple headphones in a studio vs actual studio reference headphones. As a drummer, I have used apple headphones, vic firth's isolating headphones, shure se215's (which are a great and affordable in-ear), and finally I have set upon a custom molded 4-driver in-ear (they sound amazing and the sound stage is way better compared to shure's se215 which is to be expected). The difference is night and day in regards to sound quality with the different types of in-ears. Additionally, the sound quality can also be affected by 1. Not setting a good in ear mix 2. (If running a wireless system) there maybe some interference occurring 3. The wireless system just isn't sending a nice clean signal (check how much you are sending to the transmitter and make sure it's not distorting)
I had a feeling it was pretty critical. Just wondered if my band could buy the cheap Galaxy wireless in-ear monitor package and upgrade the earphones for good quality monitoring. One of our floors gave it's last, last weekend, so it's time for us to do something different. Thanks for the info!
teerexness Anytime! Depending on budget and if you want to permanently use wireless in ears, then it may be best to spend a bit more for better quality and durability. Take a look into audio technica's m2/m3 models and if you can spend even more take a look into shures psm lines or sennheiser's line
"Here's a very simple way to do it, just use this $3000 audio interface" (the Apollo 8P he's using isn't exactly cheap)... and yes, I'm kidding. It would work with any audio interface. BTW, what laptop stand is that?
that ear monitors looks similar to Earphones. But if I had nightmares when Ear monitors in concerts would explode. BTW how can you use that one? But the ear monitors are wireless in Concerts?
You can use them without having mics on your drums. Your drums will sound muffled like you have earplugs in. That's OK, you just need to get used to it and make sure you don't overplay to compensate for the volume you may be missing. I hope that helps.
What if I’m not in a band and I don’t play to actual mixes. I have just my warmup stuff (rudiments w/feet n hands) and then I mostly jam to just music. I may start recording videos and uploading them, but I’m still trying to get to where I wanna be on the drum set first and it’s also taking time to accumulate gear. I’m sure everyone knows about that. So what do I do when I’m mainly just listening to music straight from my phone? I had just recently gotten a pair of Wireless SE535s by Shure and you can notice a complete difference with the BT2 vs using the traditional 3.5mm auxiliary and like you said, there simply wasn’t enough low end to barely hear it, let alone, feel it. I’m used to playing with around ear Sennheiser HD1s, so I’m used to a much bigger driver even though most Sennheisers are fairly neutral. I’m now considering the newer, Sennheiser ie500 pro (apparently the 500’s have more like body to the EQ and aren’t as flat and supposedly a slightly better built housing, but I can’t confirm that) because I really enjoy having that wide open sound stage where all the tones blend well together and you feel the bass, but not too heavy, and I’m hoping these could accomplish what I’m looking for with their 7mm driver and bypass system. Then I was also looking at a pair of WesTones, so you wearing em in the video was a good endorsement lol. I’m mainly looking at the B50s because they shouldn’t have any of the weird overlap I get with the 3 driver 535s and they’re also a second version of wireless, but Shure hasn’t made me too thrilled about a second gen of BT products in IEMs. Anyway, WesTone also says they put “their largest driver” in the B50 for the low end and then 2 and 2, but I was wondering what makes that any different from the driver setup in the UM50 besides including the Bluetooth cables for an extra $50? Or is the low end driver in the B50 actually bigger than the UM50? I wish they showed balanced driver sizes, like how Sennheiser likes to show off their single driver size. So does size and quality of one matter more than quantity with a different type of quality? Please note, I am using them for drumming and personal listening; I also would like possibly some ambient noise reduction and not just the passive noise reduction you get from the different tips of the Shure 535s. For me, 37db lost before even hearing music coming into my ear canal is just too much. I’m too used to playing with cans I think. I’d appreciate any helpful responses. Thanks.
Hey Nick, I noticed that when you picked up the Galaxy wireless unit, you kept referring to it as a receiver, when it is actually a transmitter and the belt pack is actually a receiver...
The feeling of playing a instrument with a stage monitor is completely different than inears.. personally I feel it is good for a solo.. but not good if I have to play along with other instruments.. you can't really make a good music.. the experience of a stage monitor is completely different!
Hi all! I recently got these brilliant boss sound isolating over ear headphones and it's great for listening to music but when I plug it into my electronic drum kit headphone output, the sound doesn't work properly. Is there a solution for this?
Hey, Juan. Thank you for reaching out! I'd be happy to recommend a headset system for you - and we have many to choose from! To narrow down exactly what you would need would require some more info about your current set-up. Give me a buzz or send me a message here and we can iron out the details! Rock On! Philip Courtney, Sweetwater Sales Engineer, (800) 222-4700 ext. 1968, philip_courtney@sweetwater.com
Yes. I tend to use mine when I go running over my wireless earbuds because they stay in and sound good and you don't have to listen to people around you
I'm kind of confused.. can someone help me understand how could we each get different mixes in our ears if the venue or club has a simple mixing desk? It would have multiple outputs, but wouldn't we all have the same mix???
I don't understand something here. If IEMs are a much better and cleaner way to go for musicians, then why do big performances have actual monitors(foldback), and artists have IEMs too on the same gig/performance? Also, are there personal mixers for wireless systems? That is, instead of the sound guy regulating and adjusting the volume levels for my feed, is it possible to do that with a wireless system?
Equipment no matter how solid it is build can fail. it is very important to have backup. Most gear suited for stage has redundant outputs, power supply's and so on. That's why artist use both on stage. They need to keep the show going even if their IEM fails. As far as personal mixers and wireless IEM Systems go. Usually the transmitter has two inputs ( left and right ) and by panning the signals accordingly one can set the balance on their body pack to taste. I only know of one product that let's you adjust the individual level of each signal and that utilizes digital audio networks like Madi, Dante etc. You basically need the foh or monitor engineer to send you each signal over that digital connection, adjust the levels to your liking, using the personal mixer ( i believe roland offers a product like that ) and then feed the analog outputs into your wireless IEM transmitter. hope that answers your question
Thanks for you answer man. That must mean that award shows like the Oscars take a really big risk, as I didn't see any [visible] foldback monitors on stage and especially with Justin Timberlake's performance, including the dancers, all of them had IEMs for (understandably) what they had to do. Is there any noticeable lag between wireless IEM systems and foldback monitors?
Practically none. Depending on the unit there might be a delay of say 3 to 5 ms, but that's about the same amount of time it takes for sound to travel 1-2 meters from a wedge to your ears. So that is absolutely unnoticeable.
The other thing to consider is that what may look like a monitor is actually a screen for scrolling the lyrics or set list. Take a look at some concert video that has shots from behind the front man. They are the rich man's iPad.
The issue I have with in ears is that you have to mic everything up if you want to hear it! In a small club or pub this is not always practical or even necessary. A lot of the time we have to mix from the stage, there's no sound guy! I'm a singer/ guitarist. I rarely need to mic my amp and doing that or even miking the whole band just for monitors is a real pain in the arse. Also, removing your floor monitors creates a real "dead zone" at the front of the stage for the audience. Once they are up front and between your foh speakers, they are hearing most of the vocals spilling off the stage, not from foh. I'm not so sure in ears are the way to go for a rock cover band that plays in pubs, unless you have solutions I haven't thought about?
Darren Turner The main reasons to use IEMs are 2: To protect your ears from loud stage volume, and to prevent mic spill and feedback from wedges. If you're talking about a pub where you don't need to mic thr amps, then the volume is probably not too loud in the first place, so you are safe without in-ears.
1994savvas I understand what the point is. However, the opposite tends to happen at an unmiked gig. Usually everything is turned right up so it can be heard! Sometimes, everything should be miked but without a sound guy, it gets too complex to mix from onstage.
Hey can I put them in a keyboard phone jack hol and still the floor monitor works? I sing audio from my keyboard and on stage I have a mixer where to put it in then still in the keyboard? thanks a Belgium singer!
Hi, I want to use a Yamaha EAD 10 for live work ...I would like in ear monitoring to work with the EAD10 for better drum sounds ..and I also want very good ear protection...that’s very Important to me ...will IEM’s do this for me & protect my hearing ?? ...do I just plug in to the ead10...what do the drivers do ? Thanks
Hey, Biscuits. Thank you for reaching out. The Yamaha EAD 10 does have a headphone out and could be used to monitor your drums directly. If you need to hear anything else you would want to take a feed from the soundboard for your in-ears. If you pair good quality in-ear monitor with the drum module or your monitor line, you can protect your hearing. Just do not turn them up too loud. Standard in-ear headphones do tend to help you by attenuating the noise level by around 20db - 30db of volume. That will help save your ears from stage volume and the acoustic drums for sure. As for your question about the drivers in the in-ears, those are the speakers inside them that reproduce the sound. Typically, the more drivers the better low and high end sound reproduction. If there is anything else I can help with, give me a call. Thanks, Grant Embury, Sweetwater Sales Engineer, (800) 222-4700 ext. 1647, Grant_embury@Sweetwater.com
@@sweetwater Hey...thanks for the reply.. if I was playing a small gig -bar gig and I wanted to use an IEM with the EAD10 ..what pair of IEM’s would you recommend for ear protection & good monitoring ? Do I have to get molds ? Also one that I could adjust for a little ambients would be great ..so I can hear my kit & the band.. most bands in a bar gig set up don’t use IEM’s but I want to with the EAD10 & most importantly take care of me hearing... So what YIEM’s would you recommend please ? thanks for your help..
@@vibes..585 Our team would be glad to look into those details with you. When you have a moment, please give us a call at (800) 222-4700 or email us at sales@sweetwater.com. Thanks for the message!
50 years as a worship musician here with custom in-ear monitors. I love how he says if there's wedges on the stage you can get an in-ear feed. But why would you want to? I disagree with a few things he has said. Ear fatigue is generally very high with in-ears. Very few houses of worship know how to mic the instruments much less have a clue on what it takes to create a decent in-ear mix.
