Wireless in-ear monitoring advice needed

[dgcalvert]

My band is a five piece band playing classic rock in pubs and other small venues. The two guitarists and bass play through their own amps and the vocals (3 mic's) go through a Laney 2x300W mixer. Drummer plays unmic'ed. The Laney is 8 or 10 channel so we can potentially DI the guitar amps into the monitor circuit.

We are looking at the possibility of buying a set of wireless in-ear monitors and associated equipment for a few reasons:

1. We need to protect our hearing - whatever we get must produce good quality sound, but MUST protect the musicians' ears from excessive noise levels.
2. We need to improve our stage monitoring so that all the musicians can hear the band as a whole, not just a mush of sound from our own side of the stage.
3. We also want to try and make sure that we aren't too loud for the audience but that we can hear the band as a whole. We are considering buying a decibel meter to check our sound levels in the audience.
4. The stage is generally fairly small, so if we can avoid using the big floor mounted monitors, we will have more space for a 'show' and have less heavy kit to carry around.

My understanding is that we will need to buy a wireless base station that will connect to the monitor jack sockets that come out of the mixer, wireless receivers (I guess these clip on the belt) for each musician (though I think that some of the base stations come with one or two receivers), plus suitable ear-protecting in-ear 'headphones' (e.g. the silicon phones that get moulded to your ear).

Can anyone comment on this - e.g. do you have something similar? Also, can anyone suggest possible makers /models of equipment and the effectiveness of this sort of thing for monitoring and hearing protection? We're in the UK, so if anyone can suggest suitable retailers, that would also be useful.

Thanks in advance for any help.


Geoff

[Petebass]

I'l move this to misc. You'll get more hits over there.

[Dkerwood]

Ummmm... if you're a five piece band, you will almost certainly want to buy a mixer with five monitor/aux channels, and five complete systems. That way, you can each dial in EXACTLY what you want.

However, this takes some getting used to. I know we tried it and hated it. If you have only one channel to devote (as we did), NOBODY will be completely happy with the mix, as you will be trying to make everyone happy.

[Diggler]

And you'll want your aux channels to be 'pre' rather than 'post.'

[BR Audio]

Hi Geoff,

I just finish installing a personal mixing system in a church and I think it also fits your bands needs. The installation was for a 6 piece band and everyone is on their on in-ear with individual personal mixes.

The system is this one:
http://www.heartechnologies.com/hb/hearbackintro.htm

Here is a hookup diagram from their website:
http://www.heartechnologies.com/hook...LiveAnalog.htm

And you can use it with this console:
http://www.heartechnologies.com/mb/mixback.htm

With this system, not only everyone get their own mix, but they can either be on wired or wireless in-ear.
In the case of the install I did, the drummer, bass player, keys player will stay wired and the lead vox, guitar, and bg vox will be on wireless eventually. They are all inexperienced musicians and they absulutely love it, which I thought was rare.

As far as the wireless in-ear unit. You can't go wrong with the Shure PSM200, PSM400 etc.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/P2TRE2/
or one of the sennheiser:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/EW300IEMG2/

and I would recomend you get custom molded ear buds.

This entire system will run you upwords of $7k. Hopufully that is not an issue for you..

hope it helps

Gil

[dgcalvert]

Thanks for the various suggestions. Did some serious testing on our current PA and monitoring last night at practice.

Certainly managed to improve things by DI'ing guitars into the PA monitor circuit rather than just using their own speakers. It was quite surprising how much of the bass I could hear when routed through the floor wedges, compared to me standing in my normal place right in front of the bass amp.

Testing certainly confirms that the ideal would be for each player to have their own monitor mixer, but that just isn't going to happen at the moment due to cost.

Wireless would be nice but, given the small stages we normally play, then wired monitoring would be satisfactory - and is something we can probably do without too much extra equipment at present.

I'm looking at running the monitor line level output from the PA into a little personal mixer (a small 4 channel Behringer mixer) to drive one or two sets of in-ear 'phones. That way the two of up who want ear protection can combine it with in ear monitoring. The Shure 'phones look like a good bet for this.



Geoff

[BR Audio]

Hi Geoff,
If you are going to get the shure phones, look into the C series. In other words, instead of E2, E3, E4 etc, you look into E2c, E3c etc. They are the same phones, but marketed towards the consumer market and are priced at about $40 less.

peace
Gil