Question for the in ear monitoring people...

John Tisdale

Experienced
How are you compensating for the difference between the FOH, and your in-ears? (not why I made this thread, but it's pertinent to the question I have...)

At the moment I'm doing it in the Axe with a PEQ, but only because I have the loop free to use as Output 2 to send to my in ears.

I imagine that some of you are even doing this same thing at your monitoring board.

Either way, whats the best way to find out what frequencies to boost, or take away? I can never get it just right. It's not like you can just measure the earphones output and compare the frequencies to the FOH, or is there a way, and I'm just out of the loop? Or do you just have to guess, and deal with it?
 
So, here's my trick. It has worked very well so far. Sound guys have loved the tone at FOH, I've loved it in my ears, and I have used it when working with several big-name Fractal artists as well.

YMMV, but so far, we've gotten great results.

Crank up your monitoring system, whatever that is, so you're getting good feedback, sustain, and all the nice things that come with volume.

Now, put in your ears. Turn them up to where you're pretty much just hearing them, and not the monitors in the room. This is NOT to say blow out your hearing. If you have good IEMs and they seal well, this will be a normal stage IEM volume.

Now, tweak your tone to your satisfaction in your ears. You should be using a good in-ear transmitter that has a built in, high-quality limiter, so bass frequencies won't blow out your drivers when you "chunk chunk."

Once your tone is tweaked, take out your ears. Do you like what you're hearing in your monitors/cabs? Yes? Then great. You're done. No? Then tweak a bit with your ears out. Then put them back in and go toward a middle ground. This will require only very small adjustments.

This method avoids the "Different sounds on different outputs" issue. Of course, if you like having Output 1 be FOH and Output 2 be ears, then great. But that requires a lot of EQ tweaks whenever you want to change your core tone.

(Of course, if you have a monitor guy, or you have your own board you bring to gigs, then just tweak on your system without your ears, send the tone to the board, and then tweak your ears from the board.)
 
Yeah, that's pretty much what I used to do before I set up the output 2 thing.

As of late I've been throwing in a PEQ just before the LOOP and giving it a bump where it seems my in ears are lacking. It gets close, and it's better than it used to be trying to balance the two, cause now my audience hears exactly what I want them to hear, and I get pretty damn close, where before it was a compromise both ways. I have a bunch of patches (one per song) each tweaked in a unique way, and I keep the PEQ the same across the board, so there's no need for any extra tweaking of anything. I think what I'm wishing to find here, is a way to find the exact differences between the FOH and my in ears so I can get them as close to the same as possible.

We use a splitter and send everything to a monitor mixer and use the house FOH most of the time, but the EQ on our monitor mixer is pretty limited, so I use the Axe's EQ. We are looking at a digital rack mixer for our monitoring soon-ish, but that doesn't really help us now. lol

The way it's done now works pretty great, I just wish it could be even better.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
No trick here, I dial through my k12 at home, run through my IEMs (Sennheiser G3) and custom triple drivers, stereo out of the axe into our X32 rack mixer, split to my k12, splitter snake split to the sound guy. My patches translate great to the iems, if anything I boost the lows a tad on the iem transmitter as my buds are really flat.

I get the volume on stage with the k12 up to where i can feel it a bit with the buds in, take out it's not that loud. Buds in i cant hear over the iem which is a reasonable volume (no ear ringing at the end of the night).

My iem mix is flat on the monitor mixer, out front he might tweak some, but the last two guys said they hardly did anything.
 
Yeah, in the long run, upgrading my ear buds is probably going to be the answer. I've got UE 500's, and they are pretty great, but not anywhere near as good as my studio phones, which sound pretty spot on with the powered monitors I use at home, but I'd look pretty silly wearing those on stage, and they aren't noise canceling like the UE's are.

Yeah, I guess it's time to start convincing my wife I need to "invest in" three sets of $500 to $1000 in ears for the whole band. This might take a while. lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'm using the Westone ES-3 or the ES-5 ear buds. (BTW, I don't hear much of a difference between the two other than $$$ leaving my wallet...) For me, my IEM mix is always a compromise. I don't tweak the tones I've dialed in for FOH. My in-ear tone sounds good but I'd rather hear it thru the speaker cabinets. When I really need to hear the real deal, I take one ear out. I would say that I have one ear out at least 50 percent of the time. I've even tried the portable stage mix / ambient mic but it's not the same. BTW, if you're using a lot of FX on your guitar, you and your bandmates may not want a stereo guitar IEM mix. If you're currently running stereo and not satisfied, try a mono mix. I prefer it. Finally, try practicing regularly with your in-ears thru the headphone out on your Axe FX to get used to the way those tiny little drivers are interpreting the sounds you hear thru your speaker cabs. You are not alone. IEM's take some getting used to.
 
We use a Behringer X32 rack, it has 8 XLR ins. So we run our IEM through those two of us in stereo and two of us mono. The eq for my mix is pretty flat. I tend to play with only my right bud in so I pick up a little guitar in the room and some in my ear. Seems to work in both large and small rooms.
 
We've actually been using IEMs for about 2 years, because we use a click. We started with mono, but I hated it, I also sing lead vocals, so that might be why. The stereo pulls the guitar off the vocals, so I can hear both evenly that way, so I'd never take one out. The mix as a whole us actually pretty damn good. We also don't run any on stage monitoring, and we've been practicing with our in ears exclusively for about a year now, and off and on before that.

I think the answer for me is going to be better in ear phones.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
One iem is way bad for your hearing. highly suggest not doing that. Also you need stereo mixes over mono as you get fatigued quickly with mono, read a couple studies on it.

I put my guitar in stereo hard left and right to open it up, then since i'm stage left, i pan my vocal to the left (about 75%), lead singer to center, stage right to the right, I also pan the bass to the right to simulate how i would normally hear. It opens up the mix greatly, not as congested as everything up the middle. Imagine mixing a cd with everything up the middle. I pan drums realistically too, so hat little to the left, toms as they come around you, right and left overhead accordingly.

The Danger of Wearing Only One IEM - Blog | 1964 EARS | Custom In-Ear Monitors

http://1964ears.com has good prices so does http://www.inearz.com/
 
Last edited:
Dpeterson on, I totally agree, nothing made my ears more tired than trying to pick myself out of a mono mix. Something I also noticed too, since we currently share a mix (limitation of the cheap mixer) is that everyone complains a lot less about hearing themselves. In fact since I switch to stereo I haven't had to touch a thing for anyone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
By the way, are the 1964 V3's universal fit? Or do I need to do the audiologist thing for those? And for the inearz triple drivers, same question.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
One iem is way bad for your hearing. highly suggest not doing that.

It certainly is bad for your hearing and you brain/ear sonic perception live.

1964 ears are phenomenal if you have the coin. If you want something to test with the ability to ship back [Amazon] check out the Westone UM2s: Amazon.com: Westone UM Pro20 High Performance Dual Driver Noise-Isolating In-Ear Monitors - Clear, 78515: Electronics

They are what our church uses for in-ears and are among the best for IEMs if you do not pursue custom molds.
 
I now tweak all my tones through my bands PA mains through our board. I have been living on "it sounds good enough" to me in my in ears. I am most concerned about what the crowd is hearing, but I do need a level of sweetness to really get into it while playing. I like CC's suggestion about the back and forth approach. I just never want to compromise tone to FOH, but there is a level of trade there where better IEM tone = better playing, which has more value in the end.
 
I now tweak all my tones through my bands PA mains through our board. I have been living on "it sounds good enough" to me in my in ears. I am most concerned about what the crowd is hearing, but I do need a level of sweetness to really get into it while playing. I like CC's suggestion about the back and forth approach. I just never want to compromise tone to FOH, but there is a level of trade there where better IEM tone = better playing, which has more value in the end.

If you work this method correctly, there is zero "compromise" on FOH tone, but there may perhaps be a bit of a "difference." A FOH guy is ALWAYS going to tweak your tone, anyway.
 
I use rehearsal to tweak my presets (when I feel appropriate) from their basic 'in-studio' settings to get them ready for gig-level volume.

At the gig I run straight into the board and from there I run my monitor mix into my IEM's.
I USUALLY run mine in mono, just because (and I'm not being self-deprecating here) seriously, we're a cover band (although I like to think we're rather ok at it), there's not a lot of point in drawing things out with the house sound guy and frankly, it doesn't make a lot of difference to me during a show. I don't have a separate EQ for my mix, I don't have a separate feed from my Axe-FX, it just is what it is and I'm happy with it.

Now, sometimes, when I'm using my pocket sound man (whom I've been friends with for 23 years now), I'll go ahead and run stereo into the PA, get a fun stereo mix in my IEM's and go whole-hog, but it's really the exception to the rule and I'm not arsed either way at the end of the night.

(Now, I say that, but I've been putting together my own PA for the past couple of weeks and between the board I bought and the rest of the gear, I'll likely be stereo from here out because, well...it's mine and why not?)
 
By the way, are the 1964 V3's universal fit? Or do I need to do the audiologist thing for those? And for the inearz triple drivers, same question.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


need to go to audiologist or get the home kit some people sell, a drummer i played with did the home thing with great results... i went to an audiologist. I have a pair of old shure universal fits as a backup in case of failure with my custom buds.
 
Back
Top Bottom