Production Company's PA + Band's IEMs - Thoughts Please?

[jaywa]

Curious to hear sound guys / gals’ opinions on bands who ask/demand to use their own IEM systems with your FOH set-up.

Reason I ask is, my band handles our own production for about 80% of the shows we play every year. Sound, lights, the whole deal. But a few times a year (usually bigger, one-band events like street dances), we have jobs where third-party production is provided. We have a pretty high-caliber Shure IEM system (100% wireless) that we roll with on all of our self-produced gigs and so our BL will often bring our IEM rig up on stage and ask the production crew to tie that into their system in lieu of the company’s wedge monitors.

I always feel a little weird when we ask to do this cause it feels kind of “diva-esque” and also it seems like invariably there are problems with the interface that cause soundcheck to go way longer than it should be. I do have to say that we have never had a production co. push back on us for this, but there always seem to be issues getting things hooked up. More than once when we’re a half-hour into soundcheck and still don’t have the IEMs up I wish we had just taken the wedges they've got and been done with it... even though we always play much better and more confidently with our IEMs.

Is it bad form for us to be requesting an accommodation like this or is it something that’s pretty commonly done and should be technically “do-able” by any pro sound company?

 

[Rip Topaz]

Well, when it all comes down to it, doesn't the sound company work for the musicians, not the other way around?

I think as long as all parties cooperate to make it go as smoothly as possible, there's nothing wrong with a band having a few extra needs.

 

[jaywa]

Well, when it all comes down to it, doesn't the sound company work for the musicians, not the other way around?

Yeah... although in our case it's always the client hiring the production company (vs. us contracting someone), so technically we both work for whomever hired us. But yeah, I've always worked under the assumption that it's the production crew's job to accommodate the "talent" to the extent at least that the talent's requests are reasonable and technically workable.

 

[testing1two]

Most hired crews are used to being thrown a few curve balls and they get the job done and are reasonably helpful. But some surprises are more time consuming than others and showing up with a full pack of IEMs is a little more involved than just wanting to use your own vocal mic or bringing an extra guitar.

In a perfect world you would have given a tech rider to the sound company in advance which contains your input list, stage plot and monitor requirements so they would be prepared (you also bring copies to the gig since written advance info is rarely passed on to every crew member).

To take things a step further, touring acts also have flash drives/cards for the 2 or 3 top digital monitor consoles with their specific "show file" already saved. So they just load the show file which has all the routing & mixes pre-built. Then its just a matter of fine tuning as opposed to building everything from scratch for every show.

 

[jaywa]

Good thoughts. I have a feeling our BL will be even more adamant about this now because a few weekends ago we played an outdoor deal where we just went with the wedges for time's sake, got hardly any time to set a monitor mix and as a result had a terrible stage mix and played badly at a high-profile event with probably a couple thousand in attendance.

 

[modulusman]

If you are wanting to use IEMs then you should let the PA provider Know days ahead of time. If the provider owns a split snake then you could use your mixer for the monitors. This would also save time for the provider so he isn't setting up wedges.

 

[jaywa]

Re the mixer... on our self-produced jobs we run all sound (FOH and monitor mixes) from the stage via a Yamaha digital board. But when we're working with a production co. we give control of the monitor mixes to the FOH guy. We did that this past weekend... it worked out fine in the end and in fact wound up being one of our better shows but again, it seems like it took quite awhile for them to figure out how to get everything hooked up. And there was this persistent buzzing in my IEMs the whole show that isn't there when we do it all ourselves... nothing that was loud enough to be disruptive but just kind of annoying.

 

[testing1two]

Re the mixer... on our self-produced jobs we run all sound (FOH and monitor mixes) from the stage via a Yamaha digital board. But when we're working with a production co. we give control of the monitor mixes to the FOH guy. We did that this past weekend... it worked out fine in the end and in fact wound up being one of our better shows but again, it seems like it took quite awhile for them to figure out how to get everything hooked up. And there was this persistent buzzing in my IEMs the whole show that isn't there when we do it all ourselves... nothing that was loud enough to be disruptive but just kind of annoying.

The buzzing in your ears was probably because the stage power was on a different circuit with a different ground than the FOH power. It's wrong but it happens a lot.

If this style of gig is going to happen frequently, here is what I would do: Run all of your stage inputs to your Yamaha mixer and if you don't already have one, add an analog output card to your board so you have direct outputs for every channel (you'll also need the special breakout cable that goes from multi-pin to XLRs). Then send the direct outs to the sound company's snake. This way you can mix your own monitors based on the show file in your mixer and the FOH guy gets a pre-eq signal to mix.

One word of caution with this setup: You are now in control of the mic preamps and if you don't set them correctly you make the FOH guy's job that much more difficult.

 

[Vinny D]

If you are wanting to use IEMs then you should let the PA provider Know days ahead of time. If the provider owns a split snake then you could use your mixer for the monitors. This would also save time for the provider so he isn't setting up wedges.

This....

As Modman said, if you are going to use IEM's it's best to use a splitter snake. (don't bank on a production co. having a spliiter snake if they are supplying wedges).

Seeing how you use IEM's all the time you would be better off making the small investment on a splitter snake so as mentioned you would use your board to mix your IEM's and have complete control over your monitor mix and it won't interfere with the FOH production.

 

[jaywa]

Good suggestions. We've only got a couple more gigs with 3rd party production this summer and then our schedule tails off quite a bit so I'm not sure we'll be making any big-time investments... at least in the near future... but I'll definitely be keeping all this on file.