# In Ear Monitors - Few questions!



## samincolour (Jul 14, 2011)

Hello all!

We've been talking a lot about using in-ear monitors recently, and I've been looking into what would be the best way to go about doing it, but I'm not totally sure what I should be looking for. We have five members in the band and all want different mixes so I don't know how we would pull this off live, here are our live preferences:


*Mixes*

Singer - Snare, bass drum, one guitar, no bass guitar
Guitar 1 - Snare, bass drum, hi-hat, click track, very little bass guitar
Guitar 2 - Snare, one guitar, click track, no bass guitar
Bass - Snare, bass drum, both guitars
Drums - Snare, bass drum, click track, sample pad, no guitars/bass,main vocals, drum vocals only

(We'd like to have everything in stereo in the IEM's)

We have a Roland sample pad and we've figured out how to run a click track and samples simultaneously live (the pan left/right method) so that would go into the mix for the in-ears.

My questions:

1 - If we had something like THIS, could we run all the transmitters AND the sample pad into it?

2 - I gather we'd need another mixer just for monitors, so how would we run it from the mixer at the venue? Would it be a case of running from the venues 'monitor out'? If so, would the monitor mixing be done on the venue board and not ours?

3 - If we need another mixer, are small rackmounted ones readily available, like a 6u board, that we could mount into something like a 10u and and have all the transmitters etc in one rack case?

4 - How would you set your in ears out? Any advice? The only problem is is that we all prefer different mixes live, i prefer tons more snare than everyone else for example, and it's hard to achieve using wedges. 

Any advice would be massively appreciated! We're trying to keep the entire thing under £1000 but if it goes over I'm sure we can sort something out. I'm sure many of you know what it's like to be in a skint band.

(BTW, I realise a grand is a bit optimistic for doing something like this but it's worth a shot!)

Hope someone can help!

Cheers

Sam
The Colour Line


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## KingAenarion (Jul 14, 2011)

samincolour said:


> Hello all!
> 
> We've been talking a lot about using in-ear monitors recently, and I've been looking into what would be the best way to go about doing it, but I'm not totally sure what I should be looking for. We have five members in the band and all want different mixes so I don't know how we would pull this off live, here are our live preferences:
> 
> ...



Are you talking wireless IEMs...

Because if you all want seperate IEM mixes with wireless you'll need however many different mixes you want worth of IEM transmitters and enough receivers for everyone who wants to hear that mix.

Usually, from my experience, bands that want to set up their own live monitor mixes (particularly for drummers) will use XLR Y cables (female > two male) to piggyback the signals from the mics they want to hear to a mixer of some sort and use that to create the mixes.

If you want 5 different mixes, I would look at going the Aviom Personal Monitor system style route. Behringer actually just released their ripoff of this system. Look at their website. The Powerplay P-16 I, and Powerplay P16-M are the products you want to look at. They allow you to create individually controlled mixes. Also, you'd need some form of preamp for the mics, so any old mixer with insert outs or an ADAT preamp would do fine.


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## DaveCarter (Jul 17, 2011)

Wireless in-ears for the whole band with five different mixes for under a grand? Afraid that's not going to happen. One of my bands uses in-ears with different mixes, and each individual member's setup costs about that much. I can say from experience that it's really not worth trying to use IEM on a shoe-string, if youre going to do it then you should save your pennies for some top gear, since blagging it with cheap gear is going to do more harm than good. One of my previous bands tried to do IEM on a tight budget, and some people were fussy about what they wanted in their mixes, so we ended up micing up everyone separately to the FOH, mixing everything with a soundcard along with a laptop doing samples, click track, the lot. Plus due to budget we had these two-way units that weren't great quality or built for the job, and only two members actual had properly molded in-ears made, so it was fairly tragic. I know the band have since abandoned IEM all together and they sound great now, the drummer just gets fed a click track and thats enough for them to stay together. I can show you some cheap equipment if you want but I honestly wouldnt advise trying this unless you're prepared to pay our for decent gear


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## rotebass (Jul 17, 2011)

DaveCarter said:


> Wireless in-ears for the whole band with five different mixes for under a grand? Afraid that's not going to happen. One of my bands uses in-ears with different mixes, and each individual member's setup costs about that much. I can say from experience that it's really not worth trying to use IEM on a shoe-string, if youre going to do it then you should save your pennies for some top gear, since blagging it with cheap gear is going to do more harm than good. One of my previous bands tried to do IEM on a tight budget, and some people were fussy about what they wanted in their mixes, so we ended up micing up everyone separately to the FOH, mixing everything with a soundcard along with a laptop doing samples, click track, the lot. Plus due to budget we had these two-way units that weren't great quality or built for the job, and only two members actual had properly molded in-ears made, so it was fairly tragic. I know the band have since abandoned IEM all together and they sound great now, the drummer just gets fed a click track and thats enough for them to stay together. I can show you some cheap equipment if you want but I honestly wouldnt advise trying this unless you're prepared to pay our for decent gear



Just quoting this so OP can read twice, solid advice.


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## yingmin (Jul 19, 2011)

If you don't need wireless, you could just get a Jamhub, which has individual level control for every input for each output. Then just wear regular headphones/earphones.

For wireless, the closest you're going to get to what you're after without buying a separate system for every member is to get a wireless system with mix control on the receiver, then use a stereo mixer with the instruments panned hard left or right, and then have the members mix out whichever side they didn't want, or blend to their taste. You'd still need a receiver for each member, but only one transmitter.


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## samincolour (Jul 20, 2011)

Thanks for all the replies!

We'd definitely be going wireless, all the guitars are wireless and the mic is too, our shows are pretty chaotic so wires wouldn't be an option.

I mean atm we could get away with only having a click track in the drummers ears but realistically (especially with our new stuff which is much more technical) we'd need to hear everything perfectly which isn't possible with stage monitors. 

I also realise that £1000 was a bit optimistic haha. 

Anyone got any alternatives to the Behringer Powerplay P-16 I/P16-M and Aviom systems? I'll money is no object for the time being, as we've all being saving for a while, IEM's were something we didn't think about and the money was going elsewhere but we can sort stuff out I guess!


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## KingAenarion (Jul 23, 2011)

If you don't like the Behringer Powerplay systems you can piggyback into any mixer with enough Auxiliary Outs and do the same piggybacking of microphones with the Y cables


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## samincolour (Jul 26, 2011)

How would we do that? :/

Sorry for the n00b question I really don't get how we'd do it haha.


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## KingAenarion (Jul 26, 2011)

Get a mixer with enough Auxiliary Outputs to create enough seperate mixes.

Get 1 Female > 2 Male "Y" Microphone Cables. Use these to piggyback guitar mics, drum mics, vocal mics, DIs etc plug 1 end into the cable that the soundguy has, the other end into a lead connected to your desk.

Mix up using Auxiliary Outs as many mixes as you need.


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