Switching between IEM's, FRFR, PA, Studio Monitors but getting the same sound.

S

spiffychee

Member
While waiting for my III on the wait list, I'm deciding how to handle my live monitoring and home studio practice monitoring setup. I've always struggled with this concept so I hope there are some experts out there that can give me some tips. Getting the same sound live that I get at home is particularly important to me but I'm struggling to come up with the best way possible to do this. Please excuse my ignorance though as I intend to read the entire manual of the axe fx III but I haven't had a chance to do that yet and I haven't used an axe fx before.

I play at church mostly and will plug my axe fx III directly into the main soundboard. I have a pair of shure SE846 IEMs that I intend to use with their Aviom personal monitor soundboards without using an actual speaker monitor. This also simplifies my setup and makes it more portable but does rely on a good sound tech.

At home I have the option of playing with my IEMs, or studio monitors. I've thought about also investing in some small PA speakers like DXR10's to try to replicate the "PA sound". I have not invested in an FRFR amp, but I'm not sure it would do me any good.

Ideas so far:

1)Get an impulse response of the PA at church somehow mic'ed at the audience center location. I'm not experienced with impulse response capture thought so I don't understand what is involved here.
2)"Tone match" a mic'ed recording of my playing through the the PA at church with the mic in the audience center location.
3)Maybe I should always use IEMs when dialing in my tone rather than switching between other speakers which would complicating things. I can have a separate impulse response that I use for my IEM's and a separate one for my PA at church?

Ultimately I'm confused though because no matter how perfect I get the PA to sound at church, it will sound different on my IEMs at home on stage behind the PA speakers vs what the audience hears in the center of the room where the speakers are pointed. Is it possible to have two outputs with different impulse responses/ tone match blocks? Would this even do me any good? Has anyone tried anything like this before?
 
Your IEM will never sound exactly the same as your PA, but both can sound very good and very close.
The sound of the PA is probably not the same at all seats/positions in your church either, so if your PA sound is good and your IEM sound is good then I'd be satisfied.
Depending on the quality of your studio monitors and IEM (I'm not familiar with your IEM and don't know which monitors you have) I'd dial on the "best" of those and make sure that the tones translate well to both the IEM and your PA.
Remember dialing at gig-volume will make your patches translate better due to the Fletcher Munson curve.
I don't think you have anything to gain from getting a DXR10 unless you need it as a personal monitor, nor would I get an impulse response of the church PA.
Hope this helps you
RB
 
Rocket Brother said:
Your IEM will never sound exactly the same as your PA, but both can sound very good and very close.
The sound of the PA is probably not the same at all seats/positions in your church either, so if your PA sound is good and your IEM sound is good then I'd be satisfied.
Depending on the quality of your studio monitors and IEM (I'm not familiar with your IEM and don't know which monitors you have) I'd dial on the "best" of those and make sure that the tones translate well to both the IEM and your PA.
Remember dialing at gig-volume will make your patches translate better due to the Fletcher Munson curve.
I don't think you have anything to gain from getting a DXR10 unless you need it as a personal monitor, nor would I get an impulse response of the church PA.
Hope this helps you
RB
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. Very helpful points. It sounds like I need to dial in a few times at full gig volume at church and I can just use my IEMs mainly for volume balancing with the tone pretty similar.

To save time for dialing in lots of different patches though: In theory I could dial in a tone perfectly for church and then duplicate the patch and then dial that one in for my IEMs and then tone match the two and save that tone match block. This way I could easily “convert” other patches for the best sound at church but have the convenience of dialing it in to my IEMs. Maybe I’m imagining the tone match feature to be more perfect than it actually is though. Has anyone done something like this?
 
I gig with iem's mostly and have not needed to do any tone matching. Set your presets up to work best for FOH, at gig volume as mentioned above, and in the context of a full band.
It might take some trial and error to get this right.

When you do get this right, I would then look at your iem sound. You might find it works for you and will save so much effort.. as opposed to having multiple sounds from your incoming afx3.

I find my patches work really well live on the PA, my iem's (64 audio A3) and also most good stage monitors.
They are not as good at home alone, even using the same speakers. Less volume and no full mix means a different context and really, different presets.

TL/DR : keep it simple to start off
 
I used to play a church setting and I found that the best thing to do is dial in your presets on a good flat monitor at gig volume in the space you are going to be playing. I can't comment on EIM as I can't stand them but I do know that a good pair is required if you don't want to be annoyed with the tone that a bad pair will produce. If the church is requiring a silent stage then you will need a good pair for sure.

Let the FOH guy worry about mixing your sound with the rest of the instruments! unless you play at church where the sound guy has a servants heart then he needs to start stacking chairs... Ha! nothing worse than a slider jockey... as you are at the mercy of what he doesn't know.

It takes work to get your FOH sound close to your monitor sound but not impossible! you just need to spend time with it. Convoluting it with tone matching would require a lot of extra work. Personally I think it would far better to RTA the room/system to make sure it's flat to start with.
 
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