Trouble hearing myself

[KingRazor]

Been a sound guy and bedroom bassist for the past five years or so. The past few months I've been playing bass on my church's worship team which has been awesome but one issue I've had is hearing myself.

Now as a sound guy and talkbass frequenter I know a thing or two about what causes this and how to alleviate it, but it's still not great.

I have really cheap pair of headphones because I couldn't afford anything better at the time and still can't really. We use Behringer P-16s as personal mixers and I have my bass all the way up, the mains and master all the way up, and the limiter low enough that it almost never engages. I have the low freqs cut a tad and the mids boosted. Also I'm playing a P bass.

I have to hit the strings pretty hard just to hear myself over the other instruments in my ears, and I can't turn really turn them down any lower because I need to hear what they're playing.

I've found that shoving my headphones in as deep as they can go helps a little but it's still not quite enough. I think I just need to get better headphones. Just wish I could afford them.

 

[Dogbertday]

I assume you don't have an amp on stage? If this is true yes you need better headphones..

Also, I've found it helps to reset your mix to nothing for a minute and add from there. Sometimes everything is too loud.

 

[RoadRanger]

Cut the lows and boost the mids on the bass even more. Being able to hear what notes you are playing is more important than good tone in your headphones .

 

[Hamlett]

Sounds fun man! I have a few suggestions

first get a small practice amp to use a monitor. only loud enough for you to hear yourself. Run a direct line to the PA.

Or get a small monitor that powered from the Behringer P-16 and set it nexrt to you at a decent volume.

also you stated that you have trouble hearing yourself, does the rest of the band have trouble hearing you and does the audience? you might sound great in the mix but washed out onstage. its always a struggle.

anyway i hope this helps.

 

[praisegig]

You might set your earphone level to mid range and have sound person select your monitor channel and increase its gain until you are comfortable and can hear yourself. Then you can adjust your level to suit when everyone else is playing. Just a thought.

At church I use a Rolls PM351 box for my IEM hardwired and had to do the above when we first got our Behringer X32 mixer. It also allows you to monitor your output through the DI into your earphones with volume control. I then can blend my output from bass, and then monitor output from the mixer for a nice sound in my earphones. I use Shure SE 215 which are around $100

 

[s0c9]

What's the FOH console? An X32?
Have FOH turn up the bass channel input trim and bring down the fader level to offset the gain in the mix. That's the only way I know to increase the level of bass going to the P16-M.
If that's not an option.. you need phones with more bass !

If you have another console and use the P16-I, you can bump up the bass channel output level (going to the P16-M's) on the P16-I by +4db. There's a selector switch on the front panel for each of the 16 channels.

 

[jdlwareagle]

Also , pan other instruments left and right , run bass and essential vocals down the middle .

 

[seamonkey]

IMHO - On the bass channel turn the bass EQ down, a lot of definition, tone, pitch, comes from hearing the mid-range

 

[EastCoastThump]

I've found that shoving my headphones in as deep as they can go helps a little but it's still not quite enough. I think I just need to get better headphones. Just wish I could afford them.

Sounds like you're not on headphones, but earbuds. If so, bass response improves with a decent seal. A better seal will also let you use lower IEM volume, because it will reduce the amount of ambient stage noise competing with your in-ear mix. While it won't touch using custom molded IEMs, I've had very good results using Sugru to turn off-the-shelf earbuds into DIY custom-fit. Much better bass response and ambient-sound reductions than universal-fit earbuds.

I have to hit the strings pretty hard just to hear myself over the other instruments in my ears, and I can't turn really turn them down any lower because I need to hear what they're playing.

Is your worship service unusually loud? If your IEMs are cranked, is it to overcome the stage noise? (For example, do you stand right next to the crash cymbal or beside a super-muddy guitar or keyboard amp?) If your stage position is unusually loud, reduce the ambient sound by using over-ear headphones or by getting a better seal on your earbuds. (Yes: ideally, you'd get the drummer to play with better volume control or get the guitarist to turn down his amp; but good luck with that.)

OTOH, if your loud in-ear mix got that way just by including a lot of voices—each boosted to be audible over everything else—I'd start over. With your earbuds in, take everything out of the mix, so that all you hear is the ambient stage noise. *Something* must be loud enough on stage for you to hear, right? Bring up your bass against that ambient bleed.

Now, what's crucial for your timing and feel that you *can't* hear in the ambient stage bleed? Add as little as possible of those sources, and eq them to reduce parts of the spectrum you don't need from each source. (For example, if the kick drum is in your IEM mix, a little bit of 80-100 Hz and a little bit of click will usually serve. If volume is an issue, I don't want a giant FOH kick in my IEMS; just enough for feel.) If you skip eq and your arrangements and stage tones are crowded, your in-ears mix will have elements that mask each other and mask the bass. Ideally, the band would fix that at the level of arrangements, but if that hasn't happened, you'll need to eq to carve space in your IEM mix.

 

[WayneP]

I have to hit the strings pretty hard just to hear myself over the other instruments in my ears, and I can't turn really turn them down any lower because I need to hear what they're playing.

The advice jdwareagle gave to pan the other instruments towards the right or left should help. However, I’m going to hazard a guess that the real problem is that you have too much bass dialed in for the other instruments and vocals (or they’re just naturally coming in with a lot of bass). If every instrument and vocal in your ‘phones is generating a lot of bass, then you have an indistinguishable, low-end mush. Happens every time, it's unavoidable. You have per-channel EQ with the P16, so go into each channel (except your bass!) and dial the bass down considerably. This is the common advice we give around here for bass players not being able to hear themselves on stage with the traditional backline and stage monitors; the same advice and principles hold for an IEM system: You can’t have everyone on stage trying to be the bass player. But even with proper EQ for everything...

I've found that shoving my headphones in as deep as they can go helps a little but it's still not quite enough. I think I just need to get better headphones. Just wish I could afford them.

As derrico noted, a good seal with in-ears will make or break bass response. Personally I found non-custom IEMs to be a nuisance for this very reason. Every time I used them it took a lot of fiddling to get them sounding right. I switched to a good pair of Sennheiser headphones, problem solved.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt


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[KingRazor]

Appreciate all the suggestions. The fix was actually pretty simple. Had to increase the gain on my channel at the head amp stage. I play softer/have a quieter bass than our other players and that needed to be compensated for at the board.

The other sound guys are newer and generally listen to my advice so I just asked them to bring my gain up, worked great!

I also rolled the bass knob completely off and turned up the low mids. Now I hear everything, including all my mistakes...

We actually have much lower stage volume than we ever used to since we got rid of all amps and moved almost everyone to IEM, and I wanted to find a way to fix this without contributing any to the stage volume.

Also I had already started panning instruments and that does really help.

Now I'm off to work on my technique...

 

[s0c9]

Have FOH turn up the bass channel input trim and bring down the fader level to offset the gain in the mix.

The fix was actually pretty simple. Had to increase the gain on my channel at the head amp stage. I play softer/have a quieter bass than our other players and that needed to be compensated for at the board.

Always nice when the solution is simple !