In ears or...?

iheartreverb · December 2018

Hi all,

after a few gigs with my current two piece (guitar and Synth with baking track from laptop) and I am really struggling for a solution.
basically at gigs for one reason or another, one of us ends up not being able to hear themselves in the monitor well and it makes the whole thing (again, with a backing track) a bit of a mess.

I really don’t understand IEM’s apart from being told that not every venue is “set up” for them. That being said, we aren’t playing big gigs or anything that would justify such things (we are just about getting more than a line check). We just simply need to have a bit more of a grasp of what’s going on.

I thought about whether we could have a mixer onstage and still send our instruments to the desk after each getting a feel to some ear buds or something, I don’t know if/how this would work.
beyond that I just don’t know if there’s something that I’m not thinking of, Can anyone offer any help?

Thanks!

Musicwolf · December 2018

If you are not using your own PA then you need to find a way to manage your own monitor mix. My latest band have been using IEMs on the last couple of gigs but it takes time for people to get used to them and everybody has their own preference as to what they want to hear. You don't want to be relying on the house Engineer setting your mix in a couple of minutes.

It would help to know what gear you are using . How many feeds are you currently sending to the FOH? Multiple synths? Vocals? What is your budget for all of this?

iheartreverb · December 2018

Musicwolf said:

If you are not using your own PA then you need to find a way to manage your own monitor mix. My latest band have been using IEMs on the last couple of gigs but it takes time for people to get used to them and everybody has their own preference as to what they want to hear. You don't want to be relying on the house Engineer setting your mix in a couple of minutes.

It would help to know what gear you are using . How many feeds are you currently sending to the FOH? Multiple synths? Vocals? What is your budget for all of this?

Hello, thanks for your reply. As for budget, I don’t know, I just don’t know what my options are. As for setup it is 1x guitar amp mic’d, max of 3x synths plus a Mac going straight into the PA. No Vocals or live drums.

Emp_Fab · December 2018

Are the synths going into the house PA in stereo or mono ? I would say the cheapest solution off the top of my head would be for you to take your own IEM feeds from your instruments into a small mixer. If you send the house PA just the left channel from the synths and feed your own small mixer on stage with the right channel, get an XLR splitter cable for the guitar amp mic, and then you have all of your instruments present at your control on your mini mixer. Most mini mixers have headphone outputs, so just plug a set of earphones into that. As there's two of you, then you need to either get a small mixer with two headphone outputs or buy a cheap headphone splitter thingy.

This way, you'll be in control of your own in-ear mix (albeit both of you will be hearing exactly the same mix) and the house engineer can do what they want with the PA without it affecting you.

If you want more than that - i.e. separate mixes for the two of you or it's important to run the synths in stereo to the PA then we need to have another think. It all depends on what you want mate. You can pick from wired IEMs and a single, shared mix as I've outlined above all the way to wireless IEMs with separate mixes and wireless mix control from your phone.

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