Tag Archives: In-Ears

In-Ear Success – A Basic Guide

IEMs can revolutionize your monitoring experience, if you do your homework.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

The other day, Christina from Merchant Royal (a totally sweet Salt Lake City band) asked me a few questions about getting started with an In-Ear Monitoring (IEM) rig. After the conversation, it occurred to me that getting good results out of an IEM system isn’t exactly intuitive or obvious.

It also occurred to me that it’s probably easy to become disappointed with IEMs, because of the “celebrity” factor.

Think about it: A big-name artist gushes to a musician’s magazine about being on in-ears, and how it’s so brilliant, and it’s revolutionized their stage show, and so on. An up-and-coming musician reads the interview and decides to take the plunge. Of course, the local player doesn’t have a massive crew of top-shelf audio techs at their disposal, which means that any issues they encounter are likely to go uncorrected or misdiagnosed. The experience quickly goes sour.

Now, I’m not comparing myself to the high-level pros in the international touring game, but I have picked up some pointers that can help you have a more successful relationship with an in-ear system.

IEM Is A Style, Not A Fix

Before we even get into the technical considerations, I think it’s important to make this point:

IEMs should be viewed primarily as a different method for accomplishing monitoring needs. They should not be viewed as a fix for a band that can’t work as an ensemble.

In other words – if one member of the band is being drowned by the rest of the band, and you have to struggle with getting a decent mix out of traditional wedges, then you don’t need IEMs. What you need is to fix the actual problem, which is that the band doesn’t know how to be an effective ensemble on an actual stage.

Yes, in-ears are stage-volume reducers and feedback abatement devices by their very nature. However, if you use them to get around a proportionality issue, then you’re just applying a patch to something that needs to be addressed at “the root.”

Good Is Necessary, Expensive May Not Be

Some people need to buy the really spendy IEM systems. If you’re playing in small venues, you probably don’t. The really expensive in-ear systems are necessary if you’re going to be a long way from the transmitter, and/ or in a tough RF (radio frequency) environment, and/ or if you’re going to be rough on your gear.

If you’re going to be gentle with your rig, you don’t need to pay for an IEM system that can be run over by a tour bus.

If you’re not going to have to fight with more than eight channels of simultaneous wireless traffic, you don’t need to pony up for world-class RF performance.

If you’re only ever going to be a few tens of feet from the transmitter, and always able to see the antenna, you don’t need to buy gear that can cover a stadium.

On the other hand, you do want to spend enough money to buy a system from a reputable manufacturer. Having worked with mid-priced systems from Shure, and low-priced systems from Galaxy, I can say that both builders seem to know what they’re doing.

IMPORTANT: I do need to make it clear that wireless for live-audio is NOT a trivial thing. We’ve made some pretty great strides in terms of “commoditizing” it, but just running out and buying a whole bunch of RF gear is a really bad idea. Even if you’re just buying a single channel, you have to be careful that the transmission frequency works in your area. If you’re going to tour, you need to make sure that the system will be able to cope with radio traffic in other areas…which probably means spending the money for a frequency-agile (“tunable”) transmitter/ receiver pair. If you’re going to run two or more systems, you need to be sure that they’re all run on frequencies which don’t interfere too badly. If you’re going to buy wireless, make sure you get help from an experienced salesperson or customer-service rep.

Bad Buds Make Everything Suck

You can have the most rock-solid, trouble-free RF implementation on the planet, and make it all for nought with a pair of ear-buds that won’t do the job.

It’s similar to playing a beautifully engineered album through a clock-radio with a half blown speaker. The mix is fine, and the reception is fine – but it doesn’t matter, because the last link in the signal chain is letting you down.

Now, you can spend a TON of dough on earbuds. There are $500 earsets on the market that are like putting a quad-amped PA system where your brain is supposed to be. I don’t think that you need to start at that level. Where you probably need to be begin is with a pair of buds that cost between $100 and $200, and have a wide selection of “tips” or “sleeves.”

I say that because I think the fit of the actual in-ears is paramount. I’m not convinced that the really expensive buds are guaranteed to fit better – they just have fancier upstream electronics. In fact, I will go so far as to say this:

It’s better to have an affordable pair of beautifully-fitted earbuds than an expensive pair that you have to constantly struggle with.

…and hey, if you want a whole article on just this subject, you can find it here.

Everything Or Nothing

The last piece of this particular puzzle has just as much to do with logistics as technical considerations.

I can’t remember who said it, but a contributor on The LAB (Live Audio Board) once made a remark like this: “For bands with their own monitor systems – please bring EVERYTHING or NOTHING.”

What he was getting at was the tendency of bands with IEM rigs to leave key pieces at home, and hope that the sound providers they worked with would fill in the gaps. Even as an experienced tech with lots of equipment at his disposal, this unpreparedness on the part of the bands was causing him problems.

Assuming that a random audio human can handle anything thrown at them is a bad idea, but the behavior continues because of the perception that “sound guys know everything that is even tangentially connected to sound.”

This is not the case.

Especially in the small-venue world, you are very likely to encounter audio techs who know just enough to run ONE house system in one, very particular way. They may or may not have a generalized conception of how routing for monitors works, and so a request for an IEM send may be met with a blank stare. Even if the house tech knows what they’re doing, some venues may not be set up to conveniently pull a line-level wedge feed for your in-ears.

The good news is that you can do something about this:

If you really want to commit to in-ear monitoring, then you should take steps to be as self-sufficient as possible.

What being “self-sufficient” means is to be able to get something in your IEM system, with or without the aid of the house tech. This can be as simple as one or two transformer-isolated mic splits and a mini mixer. Plug your mic into the split, send the passthrough to the house, put the split into the mini-mixer, and send the mixer out to your IEM transmitter. If the house tech can get you an EQ-bypassed feed for another channel on your mixer, then you can get a full-on monitor mix that features a “more me” control. If you can’t get anything from the house, then at least you can pop in your buds and blend your vocal with the ambient stage volume.

Being self-sufficient also means that YOU know how to run your IEM rig. If it’s got a fancy, menu driven interface, then you need to know how to get around on it. You need to know what the inputs and outputs do. You need to know how to get the transmitter and receiver on the same channel (if applicable). You need to know how to quickly and competently make the connections I described above. I certainly do think that sound persons should be able to handle all kinds of gear, and I think we should do everything we can to help you, but I also think that your own personal monitoring rig is YOUR responsibility.

In-ears can be brilliant fun. They can help you have consistent monitoring capability in all kinds of rooms. They can help you get your stage-volume down. They can help control worries about feedback. They only work really well, though, if you’re truly willing to make good choices and take charge of your own monitoring solution.


Personal Monitoring Is Just That…Personal

Successfully deploying in-ears takes time, patience, and a willingness to experiment.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

IEM (In Ear Monitoring) systems have an undeserved reputation:

They are supposed to fix everything in an instant.

That’s baloney, but it’s easy to believe – and it’s also got a kernel of truth embedded in it.

The true thing about in-ears is that they do solve one particular problem in an instant. That problem is audible “wash” from on-stage monitor loudspeakers. Yank the wedges off the stage, hand the artist a receiver and a set of earbuds, and *Bamf!* Life is a lot quieter, and feedback stops being an issue for monitor world – well, in the usual sense, anyway.

“Bamf,” by the way, is the sound made when something magical happens, and that magical something is accompanied by a good-sized puff of grey or black smoke. Magical events accompanied by white smoke go “Poof!”

The false notion about in-ears is that, right out of the box, you are assured of superior monitoring. That’s a lie. If you buy an IEM rig and get a perfect solution on the first day, you are one lucky dog. I’m not bagging on in-ears! I think they’re great, but you have to be realistic about ’em.

IEM systems also describe themselves as “personal monitoring systems,” and the word “personal” is very key. One size doesn’t fit all (literally, in point of fact). When you take the leap into using IEMs, you can save yourself a ton of disappointment and consternation by embracing this idea:

Getting personal monitoring to work for you is going to take more work than just opening the box and connecting the cables.

They Are The Driver, And You Are The Horn

In a certain sense, an IEM earpiece is like a compression driver that a loudspeaker manufacturer would mate to a horn.

It might not be obvious from first glance, but the high-frequency section of most pro-audio loudspeakers is actually two components. The part that’s easy to see from the outside is the horn/ waveguide/ lens/ etc. It’s a carefully designed device (albeit a passive one) that helps the HF driver couple efficiently with the air in the room. Any horn you run into will have a certain subset of HF drivers that it can mate with properly. If the HF driver doesn’t properly mate with a given horn, you can end up with a loss of efficiency, poor frequency response, or both.

Now, manufacturers usually want to sell a good number of horns and/ or drivers. With that in mind, some defacto standards have appeared for HF driver exit diameters, general compatibility, and attachment methods. There are almost certainly some horns and drivers that are made specifically for each other, and won’t work in any other combination, but there are a lot of interchangeable parts out there as well. If you’re a builder of HF drivers, you can pick an overall horn spec and build a bunch of drivers that will fit nicely.

Things aren’t quite that nice for IEM earbud designers.

Sure, most human ears are within a certain percentage of an average canal shape and canal opening diameter, but even folks in the +/- 1 standard deviation range can have a lot of variation. An IEM manufacturer has to figure out how far they’re willing to go to get a workable fit for most users, while keeping their costs at a sane level.

Usually, this means including a few different-sized “sleeves” for the system’s included earbuds.

Even so, you may have trouble getting a good fit. If you don’t get a really good fit with your in-ears, you’re going to have a crappy time. If the driver isn’t right for the “horn” (actually, your ear canal), all the upstream components – the receiver and transmitter – effectively lose the ability to do their job well. A bad fit means less usable level, along with more stage-volume leakage (a double whammy). A bad fit means sound that’s tinny, bizarre, or downright painful.

A bad fit makes the best IEM system seem like a bad investment.

Personal Monitoring Means Working On A Personal Solution

There’s good news here, though. The reality is that, by purchasing a good in-ear transmitter and receiver, your investment is on a great footing. All you have to do is complete that investment properly.

In general, I would urge anyone buying an IEM rig to view the supplied earbuds as a “starter kit” only. Also, I would urge you to view the expense of the system in the box as only about 1/2 to 2/3 of the total cost necessary for a good solution. If the “starter kit” gets you great results without having to buy any additional pieces, then that’s killer. However, you shouldn’t expect this outcome.

What you should expect is to use the in-box phones to verify that the system can transmit and receive audio that has interference and harmonic distortion at, or below, the threshold you are willing to accept. At that point, you need to make the rig yours.

If the drivers in the buds that came with the system are what you need, great. If not, go hunting for an earset that can handle what you want. (Not every set of IEM drivers will be great for low-frequency content at high-volume. I you’ve got to have that, you may need to do some more shopping.) Once you’re sure that the drivers can do what you need, you can start experimenting in earnest.

Get yourself a bunch of compatible sleeves in different sizes and materials. Get some “flanged” sleeves, too. Try to get maximum comfort, along with a bud-to-canal seal that you have to work hard to break. Try using different sleeve sizes in different ears – I’m willing to bet that your ear canals are not exactly the same size on both sides of your head. (Mine aren’t.) Experiment with letting the cable for the buds hang, and putting the cable around the top and back of your ear. Really “go for it” in rehearsals to see how well the fit holds up in response to movement, sweat, and jaw opening.

If you can’t get quite what you want, then you should spring for custom molds. (This is the ultimate in terms of making an in-ear rig yours. Custom molds fit you exactly, and nobody else.) I’m not an IEM user myself, because I’m not a musician and I usually mix wedges, but I do have custom-molded earplugs. I’ll just say this – when I occasionally forget my customs and have to use a set of “generic fit” musician’s plugs, the difference in comfort and ease of use is NOT subtle.

The bottom line?

Just getting an in-ear rig is the beginning of the personal monitoring journey. To get to the end of the journey, you’re going to have to do some work and take some wrong turns. However, when you do finally get your system properly personalized, it will be a thing of beauty.

You just have to be willing to actually go on the adventure.