Just bought some Shure IEMs to try out

vaxed

vaxed

Inspired
Been using my Traynor K4 for on stage monitoring for a while now. Never really thought about IEMs, but more and more people seem to be raving about them so lets give it a try. First gig with them on Saturday night, should be interesting :?
 
Make sure you set them up ahead of time. Get your monitor mix figured out. Make sure it's in stereo so you can pan people properly. I really can't stress this enough. Without a proper stereo mix, you will hate them.

Also, be prepared for a bit of weirdness. It doesn't sound like you're standing in front of a wedge. It sounds more like you're listening to a recording of yourself playing... but in realtime. The first few times you play through them it'll feel a little creepy... kinda... disembodied.

My entire band goes in ear now and it's fantastic. Also, because we have an electronic kit for rehearsal, everybody goes direct into the board and my wife can still watch TV upstairs while we're cranking it up! IEM's are great!
 
Sidivan said:
Make sure you set them up ahead of time. Get your monitor mix figured out. Make sure it's in stereo so you can pan people properly. I really can't stress this enough. Without a proper stereo mix, you will hate them.

Also, be prepared for a bit of weirdness. It doesn't sound like you're standing in front of a wedge. It sounds more like you're listening to a recording of yourself playing... but in realtime. The first few times you play through them it'll feel a little creepy... kinda... disembodied.

My entire band goes in ear now and it's fantastic. Also, because we have an electronic kit for rehearsal, everybody goes direct into the board and my wife can still watch TV upstairs while we're cranking it up! IEM's are great!
Click to expand...

Thanks for that.
You hit the nail on the head.
I didn't really get time to get my mix spot on before the gig, also I only have a mono mix.
Hence the first set was a nightmare, felt so weird....... I was really unhappy.
I bought a Shure PSM200, which comes with the E2 earphones. This is the budget end of the Shure stuff I guess.
Our drummer and keyboard player (who both use IEMs) recommend that I should invest in some better earphones.
I'm looking at the Shure SE530 now, which is the top end of their range. Anybody used these?

I think another key issue I had was the fit. Last night I changed the ends on the earpieces and it sounded so much better.
At the gig, there was no bottom end and my Guitar sounded weedy.
Do any of you have a separate input from your Axe-Fx or just have the mix from the desk?

Anyway ot going to give up quite yet. :?
 
the psm200 is mono only fyi. the e2c's are adequate that came with the one i have, i still use mine, but i'm getting a set of triple drivers from fidelityaudio (this week hopefully). I bought the Carvin em900 wireless which is stereo, and sounds great for 1/3 the price of the sennheiser, with almost the exact same specs. you can also set it up for dual mono and send 2 mixes to the pack and then blend / mix it on the pack.

yes i'd never setup an ear mix at a gig for the first time.. yikes. we are still having problems with our singer after about 10 practices with them. he keeps saying he cant hear anything, and i put my buds in his pack and it sounds fine, so i'm not sure what is going on. So i'm going to try to compress him before he hits the wireless so it'll smooth out his vox. i think he hits it full boar and then it peaks and clamps down the mix.

another thing, dont setup a stereo mix at practice if you cant replicate that at a gig. for every stereo mix you need 2 aux sends, so 3 guys with stereo mixes = 6 auxes, which is a lot for a board, most dont have that many.

Get intimate with your buds... i wear mine for ipod listening, and to cut the grass in, and exercising, so i get used to the feel over extended wear times. the custom molds should be awesome when i get them this week. Seal of the buds is also crucial.. especially if you have loud stage volume, you should not be able to hear hardly anything outside of the mix once they are in.

Play with the levels... mixing is an art, and not the easiest things to do. dont keep pushing up volumes to get something louder.. take other things down, and watch the volume on the pack, it should be a comfortable volume.
 
dpeterson said:
the psm200 is mono only fyi. the e2c's are adequate that came with the one i have, i still use mine, but i'm getting a set of triple drivers from fidelityaudio (this week hopefully). I bought the Carvin em900 wireless which is stereo, and sounds great for 1/3 the price of the sennheiser, with almost the exact same specs. you can also set it up for dual mono and send 2 mixes to the pack and then blend / mix it on the pack.

yes i'd never setup an ear mix at a gig for the first time.. yikes. we are still having problems with our singer after about 10 practices with them. he keeps saying he cant hear anything, and i put my buds in his pack and it sounds fine, so i'm not sure what is going on. So i'm going to try to compress him before he hits the wireless so it'll smooth out his vox. i think he hits it full boar and then it peaks and clamps down the mix.

another thing, dont setup a stereo mix at practice if you cant replicate that at a gig. for every stereo mix you need 2 aux sends, so 3 guys with stereo mixes = 6 auxes, which is a lot for a board, most dont have that many.

Get intimate with your buds... i wear mine for ipod listening, and to cut the grass in, and exercising, so i get used to the feel over extended wear times. the custom molds should be awesome when i get them this week. Seal of the buds is also crucial.. especially if you have loud stage volume, you should not be able to hear hardly anything outside of the mix once they are in.

Play with the levels... mixing is an art, and not the easiest things to do. dont keep pushing up volumes to get something louder.. take other things down, and watch the volume on the pack, it should be a comfortable volume.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that advice Dave.
I do not have the option of a stereo mix as we do not have enough Aux outs on the desk so the PSM200 will do for now.
I tried using the E2s last night with my Iphone and as I said some different buds. They fitted much better and the music sounded really good.
Think I'm going to buy the Shure SE530 triple driver ones, they can only make my experience better! - I hope.
In theory and if I can get my get my head around it, it should be so much better. I just want to be happy with my guitar sound in the IEMs, if I'm not it's pointless.

Thanks again

John
 
Bought a pair of Westone W3 lately when the new UM3x wasn't yet available, these are triple drivers and sounds huge. I've not used them in band context though, great frequency response, lots of details. I like them a lot, I use them to listen to music as well as to monitor my AxeFx.

UM3x are marketed as musician earphone monitors.

Bought my W3's them from http://www.earphonesolutions.com/ where you can find some reviews. You can also take a look at http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/

Claude
 
If you can talk the rest of the band into going IEM get a dedicated mixer like the Allen & Heath Mix Wizard 16 or if you got the duckets the Aviom system. We started with the A&H and migrated to the Aviom. We run everything in stereo so we can not only localize but avoid the buildup of frequencies which can happen when everything is panned center. The PSM200 is a good enough unit but mono. If you are happy with the way it sounds then it is the right fit for you.

Am using Future Sonics earphones, they are single driver but it feels akin to having a guitar cabinet shoved into your ear than the Shure stuff which uses the magnets commonly used in hearing aids. Have no experience with the Westone or other brands so will defer opinion to other users about those. The Carvin IEM system is definitely a real good buy, I heard some complaints regarding noise but I wondered how much of that noise could you hear when everyone is playing right?

Hope some of this helps.
 
vaxed said:
I didn't really get time to get my mix spot on before the gig, also I only have a mono mix.
Hence the first set was a nightmare, felt so weird....... I was really unhappy.
I bought a Shure PSM200, which comes with the E2 earphones. This is the budget end of the Shure stuff I guess.

Anyway ot going to give up quite yet. :?
Click to expand...
vaxed. . . . are you taking a line level monitor feed from the board and plugging this into your PSM200? If so, are you the only one using this feed? Also, are others in the band on IEM's?

I understand we're going to IEM's in the fall, and rather than upgrading my FRFR stage monitor I'm thinking of jumping into IEM's early (not happy with my current solution). I was looking at a wired PSM400 solution with their 4 channel mixer (P4M) and custom ear molds (Sensaphonics). That would allow me to take a mono monitor feed, a mic for room ambience and leave two inputs for my AxeFX. However, I would have to tap into the stage monitor feed that the guitar player and drummer usually share (it's mono).

I'm unsure if sharing a monitor mix with the drummer, where he's using a wedge and I'm using IEM's, would work. I'm also wondering if being the only one on IEM's would introduce other issues. Of course it's only a matter of time before a full solution is in place but as I said, I would like a better solution for my own monitoring purposes now.

Terry.
 
xrist04 said:
Sensaphonics just quoted me $2500 for their 3DAA-2 package. :shock:
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That's the ultimate way to go, having the ambient mics built in (the AxeFX of in-ears :lol: ).

My notes are at the office, but I believe the ProPhonic 2X-S is either $650 or $750. Still expensive, buy you get a custom molded plug with 37db of sound isolation. The fit will be pretty much perfect, and be that way every time you wear them. The OP mentions poor results, in part due to a fit issue. I've used custom molded ear plugs (i.e. filters for sound reduction) in the past, and they were worth every penny.

http://www.sensaphonics.com/prod_2xs.html

Terry.
 
I use the SE210's. They work for monitoring, but they suck for dialing in tones. They don't reproduce low end accurately enough to rely on them for any kind of tone crafting.

My bass player uses E3's and claims they have "way more bass to them"... even though he's never used mine because I think it's sick to share buds.

I've heard the AxeFX through 2 sets of headphones, my SE210's, an FRFR speaker (don't remember the brand), and my computer speakers. So far, the best are the computer speakers and the FRFR P.A. Speaker; they sounded really similar.

It is really important to get a good seal and a comfortable fit. Try all the sleeves you have. Also, wrap the cord around your belt loop or tape it to your strap. Otherwise, the seemingly small weight of the cord can hurt your ears after awhile. The better the seal, the more balanced the sound is going to be.

On using IEM's while the rest of the band isn't... well, it depends on how many mixes you need. Currently, we use 2 mixes for 4 people. Both guitars on 1 mix, drums and bass on the other. They're stereo mixes, so we use 4 aux's. If it was just me, we could utilize 3 mixes and somebody would just need to pick which of the 3 they like. Honestly, as a guitar player with no other responsibility, I basically just run a FOH mix in my ears. I just want to hear everybody clearly. The other guitar player shares the same preference, so I guess we're lucky.

My preference so far for panning:
1st guitar hard left with a weeeee bit in the right ear.
2nd guitar hard right with a weeeee bit in the left ear.
Bass, drums, vocals pretty much center. *sometimes* we'll seperate the bass slightly to one side.

This gives each guitar an identity (we use similar tones) and allows the bass to add depth to everything. If anybody can figure out how to get a clear sound in a mono mix, I'm all ears!
 
Secret80'sMan said:
The Carvin IEM system is definitely a real good buy, I heard some complaints regarding noise but I wondered how much of that noise could you hear when everyone is playing right?

Hope some of this helps.
Click to expand...

It breathes a little, but once the band is playing it sounds fine. In our little practice space, i mute the vox channels when we arent using them (need to get a quad gate) so to not clutter up the mix.

price / performance you cant beat it.. and the AA batteries are way cheaper than 9v's ;)

here are the buds i'm getting (hopefully tomorrow yipee) I got the triple driver version.

http://www.fidelitycustomearphones.com/

hopefully another price performance diamond in the rough... as i'm not about to dump a grand on buds.
 
Thanks for all the advice guys.
I just bought some Shure SCL5 earphones , meant to be the Dog's. In fact they have just arrived by the carrier.

Better try them now :D
 
Anyone tried these


MIPRO MI-808 IN EAR MONITOR SYSTEM

Sound like a bit of a bargain and get good reviews

Your thoughts please
 
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