In ear monitoring

[Marky L]

Hi all.

I am starting to consider getting some sort of in ear monitoring, for myself and our singer (split the cost of course!). But I have never used one so I dunno what is good or bad so I was hoping for a bit of guidence from those that use them.

I want lower cost really, nothing special, don't need stereo.

Also, this is dumb I'm sure, but can normal floor standing monitors still be used? (The drummer ain't worth the investment!!) do the wireless base units have a through port?

Ta muchly

Mark

[BOD2]

An overview at the link below -

[url="http://www.prosoundweb.com/install/church_talk/iem.php"]Prosoundweb.com[/url]

There are two parts - the transmitter and the receiver. Think of the transmitter like a wedge monitor - it takes a feed from your monitor mixer but instead of playing it through a speaker it sends a wireless signal to the receiver. The receiver is usually a belt pack which then has ear-pieces attached.

Yes, you can still use wedge monitors. Depending on the type of ear-pieces used you may or may not still be able to hear wedge monitors close to you.

One consideration is, do you have the facility to send different monitor mixes ? You might not want to hear the same mix as the drummer. This has nothing to do with the in-ear system specifically but, since the sound will be clearer when delivered straight to your ears, it's worth thinking about.

[Kaiu]

If the monitor mixes are done from Foh, the way we did it, was to have our transmitter rack next to the Foh desk. So that instead of running the monitor feeds to the wedges we just plug our transmitter's in instead.

As far as headphones go, any quality pair will do. We used the £20 sennheiser's for ages before we bought Shure e2's (i think?!)



HOWEVER.. one downside is that if the front of house desk is quite far away, reception can be dodgy (especially if the room is full of people or it is a low cieling). So we had to invest in a router type thing with a large aerial. (We did have 5 sets of in-ears though so it was worth it).

[Marky L]

Thanks for the advice

It's only pub gigging at the moment and the PA ain't that brilliant. But I was thinking it would kill two birds with one stone.. clearer monitoring + giving my ears a bit of on stage protection (obv depends on if I have the headphones at a sensible level!).

I think I need to have a play with something.