In ear monitors sound different?

Totally new to this in ear thing as we've always used the big, juicy wedges. I use a Midas M32 almost the same way you are. However, the difference for us is we use the bus sends into our headphone amp. By default, once we do that, we're *supposed* to run the pan in the headphone amp at "aux" but it sounded weird because it was totally dry, so we run it up the middle which allows for any desk effects to come through as well.

Our choices for on the headphone amp all in one knob for each channel of headphones are aux left whihc is totally dry, center, which gives a bit of everything, and main all the way to the right which kills any independent headphone mixes and is like a regular headphone mix.

The next thing I'm noticing is, I have to have a triple driver in ear rig for it to sound good. We are currently running the Sennheiser EW 300, IEW G3's at the moment and they sound pretty freakin' killer.

My initial thoughts on your issue are, something weird may be happening in your headphone amp...like mine where I had to adjust that multi-function pan knob. That said, it will only play into things if you are using the bus sends/aux from the console to the headphone amp. Hope you figure it out.
 
I struggle with this all the time. The audio takes a long round trip to get back to you and, not to throw anyone under the bus but...it is always always something with the monitor desk...always.

Monitor engineer: "I swear, there's no compression, no EQ, the gain is at unity, etc..."

But always somewhere in the monitor desk signal chain there is. When're it doesn't sound right I have the engineer completely reset my channel, and then restructure the gain of the transmitter and receiver for the IEMs. They don't always admit it and I never call them out publicly to be a dick about it. However, this reset always fixes the problem, every single time.
 
I play primarily in two spots, both with iem. One has aviom, the other has something else I can't remember. First few times I played with the aviom I thought my westone iems were crap. The cleans were fine, the mix was fine, but any distortion from me sounded horrible. Eventually played at the second site, suddenly everything sounded fine. So, as mentioned above, there is a setting somewhere in the aviom path that's messing me up. I played with the gain and eq but it's still there... guess I need to figure out how to reset the whole channel.
 
As a phase test, collapse the preset into mono on another system you trust and see if the verb is cancelled.

Or just run one side of the Fractal into the existing system and see if you get verb that way.
 
barhrecords said:
As a phase test, collapse the preset into mono on another system you trust and see if the verb is cancelled.

Or just run one side of the Fractal into the existing system and see if you get verb that way.
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I was gonna follow-up with that - collapse to mono.

Also, if there is a completely separate board and tech for monitoring, and if both boards are digital, see if all the channels can't be connected digitally (AES or optical input/output), with ZERO outboard gear connected.

Once again, check INPUT GAIN on each channel and check the gain staging between the FOH board and the monitor board and the Aviom gear.
 
You write that you send one signal direct to iem, and another to the board, and then you get a signal back from the board.

The signal from the board MUST be completely devoid of your guitar sound. It will be a few milliseconds delayed compared to the signal direct from the AX8. This will cause weird sounding hollow phase cancellation effects. So check that you are not getting any guitar from the board.
 
Well we finally got to the bottom of the problem tonight, we sat down with the ipad controller for the desk and a/b'd the two signals, sound engineer opened up the graphic on my iem channel for guitar and noticed he had it active, simply knocked it off and sound was 95% what I was sending straight from the ax8, the only difference was that top sparkle from the reverb and delays but I can live with it as it's prob due to some degradation from the length of multi cores were using. Good result finally so thanks for all the ideas and help
 
Paulmcg34 said:
Well we finally got to the bottom of the problem tonight, we sat down with the ipad controller for the desk and a/b'd the two signals, sound engineer opened up the graphic on my iem channel for guitar and noticed he had it active, simply knocked it off and sound was 95% what I was sending straight from the ax8, the only difference was that top sparkle from the reverb and delays but I can live with it as it's prob due to some degradation from the length of multi cores were using. Good result finally so thanks for all the ideas and help
Click to expand...
Never trust the sound engineer words. Although treat them nicely or else they can sabotage your sound. Had that experience myself once. From then on, I always double check their work. Sucks but it's worth it.
 
I look at the FOH engineer and monitor engineer as band members - because they are. The musicians and the engineers all help to create the sound so having a good relationship with them is key, just like getting along with the bass player haha. I'm a studio guy and have a really good understanding of signal flow so being able to communicate effectively on the same level as an engineer WITHOUT having an 'I know better than you' attitude is key for me.

Can you take some 5k out, maybe a couple of dB? Hey, is it possible there's a compressor somewhere in the chain? My guitar sounds doesn't sound right for some reason, I can't tell if maybe I did something over here at the source on my processor...

These all communicate that 'we're a team and finding the solution is a joint effort and not a 'this is on you and is your fault' type of deal.
 
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