IEM TRICKS - From Email requests.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by musicman7722

My band uses a 16 channel poor mans splitter snake. We plug into that and it goes to the foh snake and to our digital mixer. I was using a presonus 16.0.2 but have moved to a mackie 1608. Each user has their own aux mix which there are 6. And this is saved so auto comes up when I load the scene. It is possible foe each user to adjust their aux mix in real time via an iPad. This is a fast setup and flexible. We also use it for rehearsals. Every place we have used it with a house foh setup they have allowed us to use our snake and they have no other connections to deal with for channel adjustment.

Snake is around $200 and mixer and iPad is around $1400. Each user can choose their own item connection. Wired or wireless and their own buds.

Chris

This is a nice intermediate solution. I'm a big fan of the larger Presonus boards, but they're a bit spendy now that the Mackie is on the scene. Especially since it uses an inexpensive router as a wi-fi hub, instead of a MacBook.

As with the Presonus, investing in this rig for IEM's, also gives a band a leg up towards owning their own PA. You could even do modular rentals for local gigs, adding powered speakers on an as-needs basis.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by S6I6X

Taking a mic for room sounds and all of that just seems to be too much work for what it's worth. If I can't get enough of the room from having non-molded IEMs or tapping off of the board then I'll just wait until we all spring for a full system.

A mic will fit into the same small pouch you'd need to carry a Rolls box, a cable and your IEM's, and it's still way easier than lugging an amp. Also, IMO no touring musician should be without at least an SM57 in their bag.

Still, it's your call.

[Bakkster_Man]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

I'd prefer to have everyone on mains+me, or even having everyone on their own AUX and just have them mixed from FOH. But it's not my decision. The band leader wants personal mixers so that's what they're gonna get. So no IEMs for the guitar players and singers until we have the $12,000 or so to buy the personal mixers...

I helped my church get onto a Behringer Powerplay P16 system for far under that price. $1500 all told for the set of six 16-channel digital mixers and support equipment, plus $650 each for three wireless transmitters (drummer wires directly). We still have the choir and vocalists running off wedges controlled FoH in an Aux. The quality of the Behringer system is really quite good, especially for the price. I haven't noticed any appreciable noise, and while it may be missing a few features I would love (better indications of the EQ state), it's easily comparable with Aviom and the others. No complaints,nothing but praise for it. We spent a few weeks with our building being renovated playing via two amps for four instruments and 2 mics to set the entire service, and returning to the IEMs was very welcome.

Do you have trained FoH operators at the church? My church is all volunteers, and I'm the one who probably has the greatest knowledge on the sound system and mixing overall (although they've been learning quickly and several of our volunteers will be surpassing me soon). Since we're working with amateur engineers, the IEMs take that stress off their plate and let them focus on the room mix while still giving all of us musicians exactly what we want.

I recently began singing as well as playing my bass, and the IEMs give me a flexibility I don't think I would have had if we were still just running aux sends. Most notably, on top of setting up the rhythm section a bit emphasised and panning the guitar and keys slightly, I'm also running the vocal mix to my right ear and my own vocal to my left. Very useful for me, though far too complex for the FoH to build and tweak to my satisfaction quickly. It's just nice to have a good sound however I want it, rather than working to deal with what I get.

[KingRazor]

Originally Posted by Bakkster_Man

I helped my church get onto a Behringer Powerplay P16 system for far under that price. $1500 all told for the set of six 16-channel digital mixers and support equipment, plus $650 each for three wireless transmitters (drummer wires directly). We still have the choir and vocalists running off wedges controlled FoH in an Aux. The quality of the Behringer system is really quite good, especially for the price. I haven't noticed any appreciable noise, and while it may be missing a few features I would love (better indications of the EQ state), it's easily comparable with Aviom and the others. No complaints,nothing but praise for it. We spent a few weeks with our building being renovated playing via two amps for four instruments and 2 mics to set the entire service, and returning to the IEMs was very welcome.

Do you have trained FoH operators at the church? My church is all volunteers, and I'm the one who probably has the greatest knowledge on the sound system and mixing overall (although they've been learning quickly and several of our volunteers will be surpassing me soon). Since we're working with amateur engineers, the IEMs take that stress off their plate and let them focus on the room mix while still giving all of us musicians exactly what we want.

I recently began singing as well as playing my bass, and the IEMs give me a flexibility I don't think I would have had if we were still just running aux sends. Most notably, on top of setting up the rhythm section a bit emphasised and panning the guitar and keys slightly, I'm also running the vocal mix to my right ear and my own vocal to my left. Very useful for me, though far too complex for the FoH to build and tweak to my satisfaction quickly. It's just nice to have a good sound however I want it, rather than working to deal with what I get.

The band leader doesn't want Behringer. He's heard too many horror stories.The behringer system unfortunately has the same limitations as the Aviom: only 16 channels. We need at least 20.

Besides, we would need some additional hardware since our mixer doesn't support ADAT. We have two digital snakes with a total of 16 physical analog outputs, several of which we're already using for mains and such. So we'd need to buy another digital snake to provide the connectivity ($2000).

We have 4 audio techs at the church. For about 6 years we had an electrical engineer who was basically running all of our production (sound, lights, video, words on the screen, etc). He hadn't done sound before coming to the church, but he understood how it all worked from an engineering perspective. A couple of years in he trained two techs, followed by me a few years later. 3 years ago he stepped down and we trained up one more person. I feel I have a fairly thorough knowledge of mixing at this point (through almost 4 years of running the board and doing research), and the other 3 techs aren't too far behind me, they just don't have quite as much technical knowledge. We're all volunteers, as are the musicians.

My goal is for each musician to hear exactly what they are giving FOH. I actually don't want musicians to have too much EQ control or compression or effects for their IEMs because I don't want the sound in their ears to be different than what is coming into the board.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

...The behringer system unfortunately has the same limitations as the Aviom: only 16 channels. We need at least 20.

If you don't mind me asking, what is your lineup, that you need more than 16 channels for IEM? Any chance that you could do some grouping, to cut down on that?

Originally Posted by KingRazor

......My goal is for each musician to hear exactly what they are giving FOH. I actually don't want musicians to have too much EQ control or compression or effects for their IEMs because I don't want the sound in their ears to be different than what is coming into the board.

I sort of understand where you're coming from when you say that you want people to hear their actual output to FOH. Especially if you're trying to school inexperienced personnel regarding poor dynamics control, or other performance issues.

That said, you're not going to make a lot of friends with this approach.

When I bring 40-odd years of performance experience (and thousands of dollars worth of gear) to the table as a player, there's only one thing I ask for- a clean, listenable monitor mix, tailored to my needs.

It's not there for the house's convenience, it's there to help me do my job.

I quite often have to use a small mixer and/or an ambient mic to tailor something workable out of what I'm given. A little EQ and panning can go a long way towards making sense out of a muddy monitor mix.

I'd need to know them very well, and hear some pretty convincing arguments, before I'd surrender final control of my IEM mix to someone else.

And while I'll grant you control of compression, you'll have to pry my limiter out of my cold, dead fingers. I don't trust ANYONE enough to risk my hearing...

[fivestringgecko]

Been following this thread for a while... I was hoping my gospel band was switching to in-ears, but the sound guy's solution to us not being able to hear ourselves in an acoustically horrible space was to add monitors. More speakers to add to the muddy mess.

5sg.

[KingRazor]

Originally Posted by steve_rolfeca

If you don't mind me asking, what is your lineup, that you need more than 16 channels for IEM? Any chance that you could do some grouping, to cut down on that?

Most of the musicians don't need more than, like, 10 channels. The problem is that I need to be able to draw each person's "up to 16" mix from a pool of 20 channels or more. The Movek MyMix system allows this. Each musician can only have 16 channels at a time, but they can draw from a pool of 48 or even more channels. The Aviom only allows 16 available channels for everyone to choose from. Grouping would defeat the purpose of giving each musician individual control of each channel.

Originally Posted by steve_rolfeca

I sort of understand where you're coming from when you say that you want people to hear their actual output to FOH. Especially if you're trying to school inexperienced personnel regarding poor dynamics control, or other performance issues.

That said, you're not going to make a lot of friends with this approach.

When I bring 40-odd years of performance experience (and thousands of dollars worth of gear) to the table as a player, there's only one thing I ask for- a clean, listenable monitor mix, tailored to my needs.

It's not there for the house's convenience, it's there to help me do my job.

I quite often have to use a small mixer and/or an ambient mic to tailor something workable out of what I'm given. A little EQ and panning can go a long way towards making sense out of a muddy monitor mix.

I'd need to know them very well, and hear some pretty convincing arguments, before I'd surrender final control of my IEM mix to someone else.

And while I'll grant you control of compression, you'll have to pry my limiter out of my cold, dead fingers. I don't trust ANYONE enough to risk my hearing...

I don't do sound anywhere except my church, and no one at my church is a "player with 40 years of experience with a small mixer and ambient mic".

Most of the musicians I mix for learned how to play their instrument in the church and have been playing for less than 20 years. Some of them less than 5. They're all volunteers and none of them have their own monitoring gear, it is all provided by the church. Up until this point everyone on the team has been more than happy to accept any monitoring offered to them by the church.

Right now no one has any control over their mix whatsover, which is what we want to change. But we simply don't have the money right now to do it the way we want to.

[KingRazor]

My thoughts on IEM mix sources:

**This assumes that you actually have a mix (from an AUX or from a personal mixer) rather than a "more me" type of mix

For direct instruments: I believe the musician should receive a pre-processed signal (no filter, dynamics, or EQ processing at all). If you're going direct, this means your source is either right after the mic pre or out of the "thru" jack on a DI. This way you hear exactly what is going into the FOH board, and any EQ or dynamics processing applied by the engineer will not effect you. I like this best because if, say, the musician is a bassist with an active bass, they will hear exactly how their adjustments to their onboard EQ is affecting their tone.

For microphones: Whether it's a mic'd cab, a vocal mic, or a drum mic, I would send the musician a post-EQ, pre-dynamics processing send. This way the engineer can correct the sound of the mic with EQ, to make up for the non-flat frequency response of most instrument and vocal mics. I know from experience that a dry recording of a vocalist with no EQ or a recording of a guitar amp where the mic was shoved against the grill will not always sound like standing next to either the vocalist or the amp. EQ can be used to make up for this, so that once again, the musician hears what they're putting out.

The engineer may use dynamics processing, panning or EQ to account for the room, or to better fit instruments or vocals into the overall mix. I wouldn't want these changes going into the musicians' ears, because they may try to account for something they don't like the sound of. If a guitar player heard a pre-EQ signal of a microphone shoved up against the grill, he may alter his treble settings to make up for it, when the engineer was already applying corrective EQ to the microphone so that it sounded like standing next to the amp. Or if a bassist going direct heard a post-EQ signal from the board he may adjust his onboard controls in a way that he wouldn't have with a pre-EQ signal.

And of course, a post-dynamics monitor signal could cause you to play much louder than normal due to the louder parts being squashed by the compressor (when done right however, compression shouldn't really be noticeable).

**All of the above obviously does not apply in every situation and will not work with every sound guy or band.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

Most of the musicians don't need more than, like, 10 channels. The problem is that I need to be able to draw each person's "up to 16" mix from a pool of 20 channels or more.

You actually have 20 individual instruments and voices on stage simultaneously?

Or do you have six drum mics that you could combine into a single drum feed? That's the sort of grouping I was thinking about.

[bertbassplayer]

Originally Posted by steve_rolfeca

You actually have 20 individual instruments and voices on stage simultaneously?

Or do you have six drum mics that you could combine into a single drum feed? That's the sort of grouping I was thinking about.

Sorry I'm just catching the end of this, but I also don't see why you'd need 20 channels into in ears. Drums can easily be submixed down, same with keyboards. For your instruments you can mix down vocals into 1 or 2 channels, for vocals you can setup a second A-net (yeah I know it costs more) where you mix down instruments down and have more vocal channels.

Edit: I guess I kinda see from a previous post you want people to have full control. However it seems to contradict this next part.

Originally Posted by KingRazor

My goal is for each musician to hear exactly what they are giving FOH. I actually don't want musicians to have too much EQ control or compression or effects for their IEMs because I don't want the sound in their ears to be different than what is coming into the board.

Why is this? Just wondering. In my experience running sound and playing, it's almost more important for people to realize whats in their ears isn't what it sounds like out front and they should get used to that. That way the sound guy can do his job, and if he needs to mess with it out front it's not messing with what's in the ears.

[KingRazor]

Originally Posted by steve_rolfeca

You actually have 20 individual instruments and voices on stage simultaneously?

Or do you have six drum mics that you could combine into a single drum feed? That's the sort of grouping I was thinking about.

The drum mics aren't combined at all, they are all mixed independently.

If you include all of the drum mics then yes, we do have 20 channels to mix simultaneously.

The only way to sub-mix the drums would be to put them into an AUX (our mixer doesn't have sub-groups). And if people are getting an AUX for their ears they lose individual control over each channel. The band leader wants each member of the band to pick whatever channels they want, including individual drum mics (e.g. having only the kick or the kick and snare).

[KingRazor]

Originally Posted by bertbassplayer

Why is this? Just wondering. In my experience running sound and playing, it's almost more important for people to realize whats in their ears isn't what it sounds like out front and they should get used to that. That way the sound guy can do his job, and if he needs to mess with it out front it's not messing with what's in the ears.

That would still be true. That's why they would get a post-filter, pre-dynamics, pre-EQ send from the board. That way for say, a vocal mic, they wouldn't get the low end sub-80Hz rumble that mics can pick up, but they would otherwise get a dry representation of their vocal and no amount of EQ or compression at the board would change it. If the musicians don't have any compression in their ears, then they'll hear all of their dynamics accurately.

[derrico1]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

Up until this point everyone on the team has been more than happy to accept any monitoring offered to them by the church.

Right now no one has any control over their mix whatsover, which is what we want to change. But we simply don't have the money right now to do it the way we want to.

Seems like your WL needs a reminder that "perfect is the death of done." For non-pro church musicians, the ability to blend a 20-voice custom IEM mix is overkill—more likely to get them into trouble than out of it. And in the meantime, y'all won't get a workable IEM system until the church saves enough scratch for this massively-flexible 20-channel system?

The best thing you could do is to keep working on him to see the light.

[bertbassplayer]

Originally Posted by derrico1

Seems like your WL needs a reminder that "perfect is the death of done." For non-pro church musicians, the ability to blend a 20-voice custom IEM mix is overkill—more likely to get them into trouble than out of it. And in the meantime, y'all won't get a workable IEM system until the church saves enough scratch for this massively-flexible 20-channel system?

The best thing you could do is to keep working on him to see the light.

+1, I think I'm going to bow out of this thread and just say, good luck.

[KingRazor]

Originally Posted by derrico1

Seems like your WL needs a reminder that "perfect is the death of done." For non-pro church musicians, the ability to blend a 20-voice custom IEM mix is overkill—more likely to get them into trouble than out of it. And in the meantime, y'all won't get a workable IEM system until the church saves enough scratch for this massively-flexible 20-channel system?

The best thing you could do is to keep working on him to see the light.

Well, he is a guitar player.

I don't think it would be an issue if he hadn't had such a bad experience with IEMs in the past. He eventually got fed up and started using a wedge, and now uses no monitor at all. He just listens to his voice through the mains and listens to his guitar through his amp. I don't like it, but he's much happier doing that than he ever was using a wedge or ears, so I don't complain.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

...they would otherwise get a dry representation of their vocal and no amount of EQ or compression at the board would change it. If the musicians don't have any compression in their ears, then they'll hear all of their dynamics accurately.

If that's the way you end up going, try to save yet another channel for an FX feed.

IME, most amateur vocalists get a huge boost in confidence if they can hear a little reverb in their IEM's. A dry signal off a good mic can be pretty intimidating...

[KingRazor]

Originally Posted by steve_rolfeca

If that's the way you end up going, try to save yet another channel for an FX feed.

IME, most amateur vocalists get a huge boost in confidence if they can hear a little reverb in their IEM's. A dry signal off a good mic can be pretty intimidating...

I'll of course experiment once we actually have the IEMs.

[Bakkster_Man]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

The band leader doesn't want Behringer. He's heard too many horror stories.The behringer system unfortunately has the same limitations as the Aviom: only 16 channels. We need at least 20.

Besides, we would need some additional hardware since our mixer doesn't support ADAT. We have two digital snakes with a total of 16 physical analog outputs, several of which we're already using for mains and such. So we'd need to buy another digital snake to provide the connectivity ($2000).

We have 4 audio techs at the church. For about 6 years we had an electrical engineer who was basically running all of our production (sound, lights, video, words on the screen, etc). He hadn't done sound before coming to the church, but he understood how it all worked from an engineering perspective. A couple of years in he trained two techs, followed by me a few years later. 3 years ago he stepped down and we trained up one more person. I feel I have a fairly thorough knowledge of mixing at this point (through almost 4 years of running the board and doing research), and the other 3 techs aren't too far behind me, they just don't have quite as much technical knowledge. We're all volunteers, as are the musicians.

My goal is for each musician to hear exactly what they are giving FOH. I actually don't want musicians to have too much EQ control or compression or effects for their IEMs because I don't want the sound in their ears to be different than what is coming into the board.

We have been quite pleased with the Behringer. 6 months with no issues, it really isn't built like you expect a Behringer (aka, poorly). We don't use ADAT, not sure aside from doing two parallel 16-ch mixes why you would want one. We just grab the direct outs from all the channels to the monitor analog. The input module is in the same rack as the mixer, we send a single Cat5e to the stage and have a powered distribution module which splits to the monitor mixers. I also suggest giving the EQ a second look. Training musicians not to tweak unnecessarily isn't too hard, but it is definitely of value if the dry tone of an instrument (someone else's) is harsh. I use it sometimes to soften snare and cymbals so I can boost the overall level without pain.

Your setup sounds very much like my church. All volunteers, with myself being the electrical engineer with a moderate sound background (just enough to get into trouble ) training up the FOH and musicians. As such, I find that the simpler to use, the better results with IEMs. Especially with less tech saavy musicians. We still haven't put the vocalists onto IEMs, they're still on their own wedge controlled by FOH.

Originally Posted by KingRazor

The drum mics aren't combined at all, they are all mixed independently.

If you include all of the drum mics then yes, we do have 20 channels to mix simultaneously.

The only way to sub-mix the drums would be to put them into an AUX (our mixer doesn't have sub-groups). And if people are getting an AUX for their ears they lose individual control over each channel. The band leader wants each member of the band to pick whatever channels they want, including individual drum mics (e.g. having only the kick or the kick and snare).

If your WL can't be gently convinced that so much versitility is harmful rather than beneficial, you may be out of luck. Guitarist, of course. Have you considered three drum channels? Overall mix, snare, and kick? We only use the raw drum mix, none of us have an issue, but you can halve the channels while still bein versitile that way. But again, volunteers may not be saavy enough to mix the drums themselves, FoH should do that for everyone, take out a point of failure.

How many instruments do you have to reach 20 channels? Are you sending stereo to FoH from instruments? Our system is as follows for our 16 channels:
Guitar channels (2)
Piano and organ channels (2)
Bass and drum (2)
Spare channels for guests (4)
Vocal mics (3)
Choir mixdown from 2 mics (1)
Instrument mixdown (1)
Vocals Mixdown (1)

I have yet to hear any concerns, and the other musicians communicate quite openly. Personally, I think you can work with 16 channels most likely (depending on your setup) and with volunteers that number is actually better than 20+ due to simplicity. Your biggest hurdle should be the WL, and perhaps a fully fleshed out proposal and plan may alleviate some fears.

[KingRazor]

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. High Tom
4. Floor Tom
5. Overhead left
6. Overhead right
7. Electric Guitar 1
8. Electric Guitar 2
9. Acoustic Guitar
10. Keys
11. Synth
12-17. Vocal Mics
18. Pastor's mic (the band often plays while he's praying and they need to be able to hear him)
19. Spoken word mic (Same reason)
20. Click track

Once again, the reason we wouldn't have the drums sub-mixed is to give individual control of each drum. This is something the band leader wants.

We still have less than 16 physical outputs to spare, so for the Behringer or Aviom system we need to tack on $2000 just for an additional REAC stage box.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by KingRazor

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. High Tom
4. Floor Tom
5. Overhead left
6. Overhead right
7. Electric Guitar 1
8. Electric Guitar 2
9. Acoustic Guitar
10. Keys
11. Synth
12-17. Vocal Mics
18. Pastor's mic (the band often plays while he's praying and they need to be able to hear him)
19. Spoken word mic (Same reason)
20. Click track

Once again, the reason we wouldn't have the drums sub-mixed is to give individual control of each drum. This is something the band leader wants.

We still have less than 16 physical outputs to spare, so for the Behringer or Aviom system we need to tack on $2000 just for an additional REAC stage box.

Your pastor's position still seems a little bizarre to me (not for wanting separate drum channels, just for his all-or nothing approach). How many wedge mixes do you have currently?