We just went to an IEM system. We'd been using wedges, of course, but we've played some really small places that made it impossible to place anything else besides us on stage. We tried a little FM radio transmitter thingy where each of us had a little MP3/FM radio but the sound quality, as you can imagine, was awful. I never used it myself. In the places we've played (we're small-time), I could hear everything pretty well and with my amp right behind me, I can hear myself just fine.
We played an outdoor gig this past Saturday (a "market days" event in a little town in the country) and we used the new IEM system for the first time. I didn't have decent earbuds to use and as expected, they wouldn't stay in my ears (we're talking cheap MP3 player earbuds), so I never used the IEM for this gig. I could hear everything but it was a bit more muffled from my perspective and there were times when my bass notes became mud against everything else (not sure how much of it was the new guy not knowing his parts so well or just my perspective). Our friends and family listening and the vendors around us all thought we sounded great so it certainly must have been my perspective. When I got home, I started researching decent earbuds.
I'm on a serious budget, i.e. restrictive, so even something like the Shure SE215's are out of my price range (at $89). Everything else out there, in my price range, are all for smart phones, meaning they all have a mic. I also have weird ears because I have never found a standard earbud that would stay in my ear. The best results I've had are with the earbuds that came with my iPhone 7, but they have the funky connector (with no converter on the market) so that wasn't an option. Then I discovered the MEE Audio M6 Pro's. $36 on Amazon.
I read lots of reviews (I like to read the bad ones first) on a lot of different earbuds. I was mainly looking at ones that were meant for running or the gym, for excessive motion and sweating. There were plenty of mixed reviews on all of them, from fit to sound quality. When I honed in on the M6's, I could not find a valid bad review (filtering out the "I didn't like them" reviews). I watched a ton of reviews on YouTube and still not one bad review.
In the box, they include two cables, one with a mic and one without. The cables use the "memory wire" for around the ear. They include 6 pairs of silicone tips, of varying sizes and shapes, and a pair of Comply T-200 tips. There's also a 3.5mm to 1/4" adapter and a nice hard-shell carrying case. I looked at the price of replacing the cable ($10) and the Comply tips (3 for $20). MEE also offers a half-price replacement policy should you lose or break your buds for any reason. For $36, it seemed like a pretty safe investment.
They come today and I can't wait to try them out. I'm looking forward to hearing a better sound on stage, regardless of how big or small. Most of all, I'm really hoping they will fit my ears using whatever tips work best. I'll report back about the fit and comfort later this evening. We have a gig Friday night so if anyone is interested, I'll report back on the earbud's performance.
