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On-Stage Harmonic Interference/”Beating”; Hearing Correct Notes as Incorrect Notes

#21
_Some Dude said:
Comply sells a package with 3 sizes. The Shure's come with 3 sizes of Comply, but if your bandmate didn't keep track of them you may need to buy a package.

When my band did the IEM conversion I spent about 7 months with a couple of my bandmates insisting they had a good seal before I got mad and swapped their tips for them. Then I got the "that's so much better" response.
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I'll make sure to try swapping in all the Comply tips I have to see if I can gain any ground there, thanks.
 
#22
ShoesMagoo said:
I’ve been searching around for info on this and have found a lot of posts on EQ, mixing, and volume but none on this specific topic. Perhaps I missed them, if so, feel free to direct me to them.

I currently play in a rock band with two heavy guitars, drums, and a vocalist. Playing at the guitarist’s in-home studio (a small space) with an amp and cab I am able to hear everything I need with no issues. I always wear earplugs, either Earasers, Hearos, or just regular foamies. Have experimented with in-ears and love them but inadvertently turned them up too loudly one day and have been waiting for a bit of subsequent hearing damage in one ear to subside before I can use them again (or maybe I won’t, given the situation).

We recently set up to play at an indoor, medium-sized venue and have had some opportunities to practice/sound check there. The crux of the situation is that even after EQing my sound from the board for me to be able to hear it (mostly) clearly through my wedge I can’t escape this phenomenon of sometimes hearing correctly played notes a half step or so out of tune, and sometimes completely losing the sound of other notes. This is only happening when the whole band is playing, I can hear myself just fine while playing solo.

Each of us has a wedge and I’m stage left. The drummer’s, which is roughly 12 feet behind me on his left, is up loud enough that I can hear what he wants my volume to be at for himself competing on the edges with my wedge. He will not use in-ears, earplugs, or any other form of hearing isolation/protection. I tried using the in-ears and turning my wedge down/off but the problem seems to get worse. The overall on-stage volume is so loud that I’m not able to hear myself clearly through the in-ears without cranking the volume to the point of destroying my ears (not an option, even for one show). I can walk right up next to my wedge or the drummer’s wedge and hear the questionable notes become less questionable, but even then, it is too loud to hear them all perfectly clearly. It seems like the bass as an instrument is at a distinct disadvantage in this situation just based on the nature of the frequencies of sounds that it produces trying to compete with distorted guitars. In fact, I can hear everything both guitarists are playing just fine, and they don’t even feel like they’re so loud that they are taking over the sonic space on the stage.

I played in bands on stages of various sizes 15+ years ago and never ran into this problem, at least not to this degree. I used earplugs then but also always had an amp on stage and never played with more than one guitarist, and they were usually not implementing the same level of distortion that we have in my present band. One thing I haven’t tried currently is to play with an amp on stage in addition to the wedge, but I don’t think lack of volume is the problem and thus adding more would likely make it worse. I can see if we have some time to try playing with different configurations of band members and myself to try to narrow down where it is coming from, but I feel like we could spend an endless amount of time on that and experimenting with different wedge EQing and maybe never even get anywhere with it. Plus, we have limited time and availability, so that might not even be a realistic option to explore.

So…harmonic interference, resonance, phase shifting, or just too f-ing loud, maybe? Trying to understand more about why this is happening and if there’s a path to correcting it, advice and input are welcome.
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Happened to me exactly ONCE in 30+ years under these specific circumstances that all lined up:
-"Guest bassist" up to play one song mid-set.
-Ampless or super low-volume amp
-Required IEM use
-Un-dialed-in IEM.
-Song in a key that was 1/2 step off what I was expecting that I'd played in more than one key before.
-Tone of bass/room boomy with little midrange definition that paradoxically made the bass too loud in the wrong frequencies, but yet too quiet in the right frequencies.

I could tell something wasn't quite right, sonically. About 30 seconds in, while mentally screaming trying to figure out what was sounding wrong and why, the guitar player turns to me, playing a clear E major (or whatever it was) chord, and I recognize instantly I'm 1/2 step off. I felt like such a moron for that mistake, even if I controlled almost none of the factors contributing to the problem.

In the future, I'd do everything different. If there was ONE single thing I could do, it would have been to pump up the midrange and/or reduce the bass boominess. Everything else would have been fine if I'd done that.
 
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#25
I’ve had that issue occasionally with amps and wedges (no IEMs)but only on certain songs. Not only did the bass sound off key, I had a terrible time singing in key. We finally realized it was happening on songs where the guitarist was using a lot of distortion and playing heavily on the low (E, A, D) strings. When that happened, to my ears there was no discernible key. Rather, it was just noise. We resolved the issue by his cutting down on the distortion and using all six strings when he played the chords on those songs.
 
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#26
RandomKaren said:
I'm guessing you're not familiar with how guitar cabs are usually described, as opposed to bass cabs. Open, semi-open and closed or sealed back refers to the back of the cab, no matter how inaccurately. Anyhow this is pointless bickering over terminology so have a nice day :)
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Yes very familiar with various versions of open back guitar cabs and combo amps.
 
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#28
I’ve had this occlusion happen to me twice in the last 15 yrs. Done literally 100’s (maybe 1000+) gigs in that time frame.
First was at the long closed Toby Keith’s in Dallas. Using large hi-powered LOUD wedges, no IEM’s at that gig. Wood on concrete stage, wooden surrounds. Certain notes would obliterate everything, leaving one unable to discern what note it was or even key we were in.
I’ve been 100% IEM since then, except for 2 gigs.

Second time was back in Feb this year, the 2nd time I’d played that venue in far northwest Houston. Wooden stage again. 1st time they had a younger sound guy. 2nd time the owner ran sound. Everyone was IEM, 8-piece tribute band. The bass was such that on some parts of some songs, like before, it obliterated the ability to tell what notes I was playing and hearing thru my IEM's. Definite mind freak because it was just bass “noise” that left me questioning what note I was playing and where in the song I was. Drummer commented on hearing the same issue after the gig.
 
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#29
Past due update here. Adjusting the wedge to vocals-only and cranking my 300w amp and 2x10 cab on stage and right in front of me felt about as effective as trying to assist a hurricane with a leaf blower. Playing through them in my living room, I can't push the volume much past 10 o'clock without having to put earplugs in. Maybe more juice would have mattered, but maybe not so much considering how much this underlined the abject loudness of the stage volume that I was trying to compete with.

We didn't have any extra time to try to tweak with the EQ for the guitars, and they weren't about to want to mess with it anyway. Asking anyone to turn down, I'm certain, would have resulted in a chorus of unpleasant and possibly hostile sighs. It will definitely be worthwhile to see if we can pull out some of their low end next time. I did get to hear what the drums sounded like with and without the mics on. The only difference I noticed was that with them on, the kick shook the stage due to coming out of the subs underneath. Pretty sure my drummer mostly just likes to beat the tar out of the drums and uses playing in a band as an excuse.

The comply tips I had on the KZ in-ears ripped to pieces when I very delicately tried to remove them to put them onto the other, better in-ears. Another of the three sets did the same when I tried to put them on, but finally got the third set to install undamaged. I can't remember ever having had these sitting in a hot car or anything, but I suppose cheap foam is cheap foam. And the seal that they provided, however complete, still wasn't enough to cancel enough of the on-stage noise to matter. I'll have to buy another set and test them all out when they're fresh to see if one of the others will work better for me.

Thankfully the show went well and we were extremely well-received by a packed crowd, so at least there's that. Not too sure where to go from here other than testing out the new Comply tips and trying to find the best possible fitted, noise-canceling IEMs that I can afford.

edit: Forgot to mention what I ended up actually doing for the show, which was putting in a pair of Hearos three-flange earplugs and running my bass through my wedge as it was originally set up. And just dealing with it.
 
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#31
ShoesMagoo said:
Past due update here. Adjusting the wedge to vocals-only and cranking my 300w amp and 2x10 cab on stage and right in front of me felt about as effective as trying to assist a hurricane with a leaf blower. Playing through them in my living room, I can't push the volume much past 10 o'clock without having to put earplugs in. Maybe more juice would have mattered, but maybe not so much considering how much this underlined the abject loudness of the stage volume that I was trying to compete with.

We didn't have any extra time to try to tweak with the EQ for the guitars, and they weren't about to want to mess with it anyway. Asking anyone to turn down, I'm certain, would have resulted in a chorus of unpleasant and possibly hostile sighs. It will definitely be worthwhile to see if we can pull out some of their low end next time. I did get to hear what the drums sounded like with and without the mics on. The only difference I noticed was that with them on, the kick shook the stage due to coming out of the subs underneath. Pretty sure my drummer mostly just likes to beat the tar out of the drums and uses playing in a band as an excuse.

The comply tips I had on the KZ in-ears ripped to pieces when I very delicately tried to remove them to put them onto the other, better in-ears. Another of the three sets did the same when I tried to put them on, but finally got the third set to install undamaged. I can't remember ever having had these sitting in a hot car or anything, but I suppose cheap foam is cheap foam. And the seal that they provided, however complete, still wasn't enough to cancel enough of the on-stage noise to matter. I'll have to buy another set and test them all out when they're fresh to see if one of the others will work better for me.

Thankfully the show went well and we were extremely well-received by a packed crowd, so at least there's that. Not too sure where to go from here other than testing out the new Comply tips and trying to find the best possible fitted, noise-canceling IEMs that I can afford.

edit: Forgot to mention what I ended up actually doing for the show, which was putting in a pair of Hearos three-flange earplugs and running my bass through my wedge as it was originally set up. And just dealing with it.
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Question: what Comply kind/model did you use with the KZs? I never seem to find the right one.
 
#34
One of the venues we play semi-regularly has a standing wave problem that happens about 5 feet in front of the stage and again right in the middle of the bar serving area. Took a little figuring, but we found that a combination of HPF and some tight side chain compression in the bass and kick did the trick. Took some trial and error, but it’s worked every time we’ve been there…
 
#35
Bonecat said:
One of the venues we play semi-regularly has a standing wave problem that happens about 5 feet in front of the stage and again right in the middle of the bar serving area. Took a little figuring, but we found that a combination of HPF and some tight side chain compression in the bass and kick did the trick. Took some trial and error, but it’s worked every time we’ve been there…
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If possible moving the PA cabinets some could help as well or at least move the peaks of the comb filtering to another location.
 

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