Small venues, sound guys and IEMs…

JakeLeigh

Hi guys. I’ve been watching this forum for a long time but haven’t posted anything yet. 

I’d like to start using in ear monitoring after struggling to hear my vocals with wedges for years. I know ideally my band would use an X32 type all in one unit where we are in control of our own mixes but we don’t have the budget for something like that, plus I’m the only one in the band that wants IEM. 

I’m thinking of picking up an XVive U4 and giving the transmitter to the in house sound guy. Does anyone have experience or advice with this situation? Are sound guys in small venues 150-300ish capacity generally ok with this? Do they usually have a spare aux/monitor out to accommodate this set up? I run my helix direct quite often and I’m sometimes met with a bit of resistance from sound engineers when explaining that I want to DI. Should I expect a similar situation?

Thanks guys

steamabacus

I think @Danny1969 makes a small box that enables you to keep control of your own monitor mix (the Dr Watson, is it?). He will certainly be able to advise on a solution.

Danny1969

There's quite a few things you can do depending on how much control you want mix wise to your IEM's. 

The Xvive shouldn't trouble any FOH guy ... basically he just plugs it into an aux send in order to send you the audio but he will have no idea what the mix sounds like to you and if anyone onstage turns up their mix will go up in your ears even if he turns them down on the desk fader. So it's not an ideal situation to have no control of an IEM mix unless theres a dedicated monitor mixer at the side of the stage. 

An X32 is a bit overkill for most bands. There's a lot of cheaper surfaceless options available  like the Soundcraft Ui series from £390 ish. Going for a digital desk will generally give you enough aux sends to run a 3 to 6 stereo IEM's and there's always an ap to allow your phone to control the IEM mix. 

If it's mainly your vocal that needs to be in your ears  then a cheaper option is the  Behringer MA400. Basically your mic plugs into the MA400 and then goes on to FOH. This means you control the level of your vocal in your ears. The monitor control on the unit it then used for whatever the FOH guy is sending you as a monitor mix. The main thing is you have control of your vocal regardless of what he does.  




My own version of this had dedicated Helix type modeller input and control plus built in ambient mics as well as built in mic preamp with variable gain and transformer split for FOH. This was too time consuming to manufacture though so I only made around 6 units. 

If you play guitar and use a cable then you can send your IEM mix up a special cable that serves both as a guitar cable and a stereo IEM cable. Some people lash together 3.5mm extension leads to regular guitar cables or they buy a more elegant solution like the Dr Watson IEM combiner cable I make. This means you don't need the expense and battery hassle of wireless. Bear in mind there's a reason a good wireless IEM wireless system without IEM's cost £600 upwards. Basically the cheap units are awful sonically. 

RnRD

I have used the behringer device that @Danny1969 mentions there, and it's a good way of making sure you can hear your vocal.
A more convoluted way of doing things, and one I use on gigs I play with a band who don't have a dedicated mix channel for me on their desk (plus they use wedge monitors, which I don't like to use) is to have a small mixing desk of my own with a headphone output. I use XLR splitters so that I can send the vocal mic to their desk AND my desk, ditto with the mic on the guitar cab. Then I can plug my headphones into my own desk and select as much or as little of my vox and guitar as I need.

The downside is that I don't get anyone else in my ears, other than what bleeds in from on-stage, but it's enough to get me through gigs and keep my vocals in tune with my guitar.

maltingsaudio

Regarding the original question most engineers would be happy to accommodate your in ears on a gig PROVIDED YOU TELL THEM BEFOREHAND! But be prepared for mono only , depending on the desk.

I haven’t come across that Behringer unit befor looks interesting and useful. Shame they put a Jack in for the monitor input as opposed to an xlr which also raises the question of the stereo switch for the earphones or is it you can have your mic in one ear and the monitor feed in the other?

Danny1969

maltingsaudio said:

Regarding the original question most engineers would be happy to accommodate your in ears on a gig PROVIDED YOU TELL THEM BEFOREHAND! But be prepared for mono only , depending on the desk.

I haven’t come across that Behringer unit befor looks interesting and useful. Shame they put a Jack in for the monitor input as opposed to an xlr which also raises the question of the stereo switch for the earphones or is it you can have your mic in one ear and the monitor feed in the other?

The monitor input is on TRS as it's stereo .... to get stereo from XLR would obviously need 2 sockets and Behringer like to keep things cheap
The switch enables a mono input to appear in both ears ... without it inserting a mono jack would short one ear to ground.

Anyone making up adapters for these units from XLR desk outputs needs to be aware that first you need to convert both XRL's to single ended outputs ... so short pin 3 to pin 1 on both XLR's. Now you have 2 hots with the pin 2's and 2 grounds. Both grounds need to be shorted to the TRS ground and the 2 x pin 2 hots go to the ring and tip of the TRS. Which pin 2 goes to which tip or ring will decide which is left and which if right but will work regardless. I've had to make loads of these cables for people who tried to buy a cable off the shelf and wondered why it didn't work. 

maltingsaudio

@Danny1969  So close and screwed up on the implementation!

shufflebeat

JakeLeigh said:

I’m thinking of picking up an XVive U4 and giving the transmitter to the in house sound guy.

Lots of good advice here.

I'm not a fan of the Behringer box only because I found it to be a bit of a bird's nest of cables, if it could be built into a pedal board it would be much more useful.

I keep the Behringer p2 handy both as player and sound-tech:

https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0CH4

I like to hook it up to either a feed from the mixer headphone output (in stereo mode) or an aux send (in balanced mode) and feed it down the multicore.

Where possible I use a proper Trantec IEM system but sometimes it's just too much trouble for a small gig setup.

I've just picked up the Xvive u4, all looking good so far. If you're going to give it to a sound tech: 1) make sure it's fully charged at both ends, 2) carry a very short XLRm/XLRf for times when space at the outputs is minimal, 3) carry a short XLRm/TRSm for whan the mixer has aux sends on TRSf.

ALL IEMs SHOULD BE LIMITED, NONE OF THE CHEAP ONES ARE SO YOU WILL DESTROY YOUR HEARING IF YOU DON'T HANDLE THIS CAREFULLY. Read up on the subject.

Apologies for raised voice.

Musicwolf

shufflebeat said:

ALL IEMs SHOULD BE LIMITED, NONE OF THE CHEAP ONES ARE SO YOU WILL DESTROY YOUR HEARING IF YOU DON'T HANDLE THIS CAREFULLY. Read up on the subject.

Apologies for raised voice.

No need to apologise for the raised voice - this is very important.  Even with a limiter you need to take great care as different IEMs have different sensitivities.