The IEM (in ear monitors) Bible thread - a guide to help every musician

[JPJ]

So these arrived in the post this morning. ACS Engage Classic custom moulded IEMs. Tried them for fit and they’re perfect. Will try them with my bass later today, but no chance to try them in anger until the new year. 

[wateroftyne]

On 16/12/2025 at 18:08, EBS_freak said:

And there goes all your bass.

 

Just curious (and to repeat what's already been asked) - do we know for sure that these are a bass-killer?

I prefer the idea of the Ambients in principle, but not if they sound like an old-timey radio.

[dave_bass5]

On the back of that question, is the effect the same (more

or less) as having a slightly loose earpiece, or is there more to it? 
i know i lose a lot of low end when one of mine gets a bit unseated. 

[Al Krow]

Interesting to pick up on this. Our singer mentioned on Sat night she only used one ear piece and left the other one out "otherwise she felt disconnected from the band and audience" - which is a classic IEM conundrum.

It doesn't affect me at all in the same way - I enjoy the clarity and comfort of having a tailored IEM mix and no one's complaining about missing out on the experience of a deafening guitar amp - ok maybe the occasional dep guitarist - now we're all going through FoH apart from the acoustic drums.

 

I don't really fancy the additional set-up faff and need to worry about an additional source of feedback from an ambient / overhead mic, just for the sake of one band member, but was wondering if there's decent ambient IEMs on a par with the KZ ZARs we're using, that don't cost the earth, and she can treat herself to a pair?

[EBS_freak]

To be clear - if the seal is broken, ambient or otherwise, there is a tradeoff in that you start to lose bass response. How much of that which is tolerable - but as a bass player, you probably won’t appreciate it.

 

Best practice is to think along the lines, anything you want to hear, you pump in via the mix.

 

There is a line of thinking that if you have a bass rig on stage, having that come in ambiently offsets the bass loss… but the goal is to keep stage volumes low so the mix the audience hears out front is better.

[EBS_freak]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

 

 

I don't really fancy the additional set-up faff and need to worry about an additional source of feedback from an ambient / overhead mic, just for the sake of one band member, but was wondering if there's decent ambient IEMs on a par with the KZ ZARs we're using, that don't cost the earth, and she can treat herself to a pair?

There is no additional risk of a feedback as the ambient mic won’t be going into foh. There’s no way the ambient mic will be picking up any output from the IEMs.

 

To be fair, setting up an ambient mic is pretty low effort.

Edited December 22 by EBS_freak

[wateroftyne]

7 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

To be clear - if the seal is broken, ambient or otherwise, there is a tradeoff in that you start to lose bass response. How much of that which is tolerable - but as a bass player, you probably won’t appreciate it.

 

Best practice is to think along the lines, anything you want to hear, you pump in via the mix.

 

There is a line of thinking that if you have a bass rig on stage, having that come in ambiently offsets the bass loss… but the goal is to keep stage volumes low so the mix the audience hears out front is better.

In that case I might go with the ambients - I don't think we'll be silent stage any time soon. Thank you.

[JPJ]

We’ve gone with a couple of ambient mics, with a gate side chained off my bass channel, as I am probably the only band member playing every note on every song. Only tried it once and it works well. I do need to raise the gain on the ambients a little but these coupled with the general pick up from the vocal mics works for us. 

[EBS_freak]

Why would you want to gate?

[Muzz]

I've spoken to ACS about their Ambient series, and while they do acknowledge there'll be some loss in bass response, their approach has been to design the inears to minimise this. It's a trade-off, I guess, and the results will be acceptable to some and not others. Sadly I don't have the cash to try them out, and like all custom inears it's a leap of faith. I sometimes have to pop one inear slightly out to hear the drums properly (venue/setup depending, especially with deps), and even then (with the bass turned up in my mix), it's plenty.

 

Talking to other band members, though, I think the ACS 'squidgy' casts are more comfortable than the harder shells of some other vendors...I can wear mine for hours, where the other guys (on a long day's session) were getting uncomfortable.

 

I would add that I've done some gigs on the runup to Xmas with bands that don't have the full quiet stage/inears setup, and I absolutely wouldn't go back; not hearing myself clearly and accurately (as well as at a volume I can control) is a deal-breaker for me these days.

Edited Wednesday at 08:27 by Muzz

[JPJ]

11 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Why would you want to gate?

To close the ambient mics when we are playing to minimise the FOH spill into our in-ears

[SimonK]

Right - new years resolution (when it comes) is going IEM with our church band. We've just done a firmware update on the desk so that we can each control our own monitor feeds using the Yamaha phone app, and currently we are looking at buying a bunch of Behringer P1s (and a couple splitter boxes) and then everyone providing their own headphones.

 

I tried to read the opening posts of this thread but there is way too much information for my two simple questions:

 

1) I've taken my Linsoul KZ ZS10 ear pieces back from my son (who was using them for gaming), but he's buggered up the cable - can anyone recommend a replacement (probably looking at around £20 accepting it is probably a disposable item in the long run)? There seem to be plenty of options on Amazon?

 

2) I think for my own convenience I want something a bit more that the Behringer and something that is wireless, so was looking at the Nux B-7 - any thoughts on these (NB I will never be more than a few feet away from the transmitter, we currently have three wireless mics and potentially up to eight other IEMs running (and two Wifi networks) RE interference?

[warwickhunt]

3 minutes ago, SimonK said:

2) I think for my own convenience I want something a bit more that the Behringer and something that is wireless, so was looking at the Nux B-7 - any thoughts on these (NB I will never be more than a few feet away from the transmitter, we currently have three wireless mics and potentially up to eight other IEMs running (and two Wifi networks) RE interference?

 

Personally if you are only a few feet away from a given transmitter point and unlikely to be moving around much, I'd be looking at being wired.  If it must be wireless, I'd be going 5Ghz rather than 2.4; 2.4 can be congested and you have quite a few devices.

[SimonK]

1 hour ago, warwickhunt said:

 

Personally if you are only a few feet away from a given transmitter point and unlikely to be moving around much, I'd be looking at being wired.  If it must be wireless, I'd be going 5Ghz rather than 2.4; 2.4 can be congested and you have quite a few devices.

 

I think I need wireless as we have some very inexperienced sound volunteers and I do tend to take a walk around the hall during sound check just to help (and yes clearly I wouldn't have the monitors in if listening to FOH), but want to be able to pop them back in rapidly!

 

RE 5GHz, something like: https://www.thomann.co.uk/mipro_mi_58rt_58_ghz.htm or any other recommendations (this is probably the top of the budget!).

 

EDIT - just saw these that seem cheap enough not to worry if they don't work: https://www.thomann.co.uk/swiff_audio_wx520_monitor_wireless_system.htm

Edited 3 hours ago by SimonK

[Wombat]

I have the NUX B7s and they work great.

[warwickhunt]

21 minutes ago, Wombat said:

I have the NUX B7s and they work great.

 

I'm not saying 2.4Ghz doesn't work, there are 1000's of regular gigging musicians using systems on 2.4 and many rarely have an issue but when I was using 2.4 I was plagued with drop outs; I put it down to our desk being 2.4, everyone else in the band using 2.4 AND most of the club/pub systems had stuff running at 2.4.  As soon as I changed to the 5.Ghz range (in fact the MiPro system) I got zero drop out, the downside is that the range is reduced but I've never had a problem as most stages are quite open with no major obstructions.  

 

As a side note, today I'm off to do a multiband 4 day theatre gig and the techs requested to know in advance who was using what radio/IEM gear and on what frequencies bands.

[dave_bass5]

I use the Thomanns version of the MiPro 2.4 system and have never had an issue either. The only issue we have had recently was our XR18 was acting up, and i have a feeling this started when 2 of the band started using 5.8ghz wireless systems in close proximity to our external router. Ive always used 5.8 for the XR18 but at the last gig i switched it to 2.4 and it worked flawlessly. 

I wonder if the systems with the larger antenna are a bit more robust over those that have them internally like the Lekato MS-02 etc?

 

Im also starting to wonder if 5 is now getting congested. I do scan networks at some venues and rarely find many operating (publicly) on 5.8, but i cant help feel that all those 5G phones in the audience could start interfering with the 5.8GHZ network. 

Could be way off the mark though. 

[Wombat]

B7s are 5.8. Or if they are both I have the 5.8 version. I got them specifically as I’d been having problems with the Boss WL wireless I was using. I love them too but found that in a partly packed pub I couldn’t get 5 ft from the receiver.

[dave_bass5]

54 minutes ago, Wombat said:

I have the NUX B7s and they work great.

Do you get any distortion? I had a set for a few days and while i thought they sounded ok, when i put music through them (virtual soundcheck using the XR18) i could hear a distortion on the music. Apparently this is a thing with these. Even Nux mention it.  I never tried them in a loud environment to see if it was really noticeable, but it was at home. 

[warwickhunt]

7 minutes ago, Wombat said:

B7s are 5.8. Or if they are both I have the 5.8 version. I got them specifically as I’d been having problems with the Boss WL wireless I was using. I love them too but found that in a partly packed pub I couldn’t get 5 ft from the receiver.

 

Thomann advertise them as 2.4 but that might be incorrect.  

[Wombat]

I haven’t listened to music through them - apart from when they arrived I think I connected them to see if they ‘worked’. I don’t recall any. If I find the gig is getting loud and I turn them up i sometimes get a bit if I’m digging in. But it’s not something I’ve ’noticed’ (until you said) or that has bothered me.

[Wombat]

3 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

 

Thomann advertise them as 2.4 but that might be incorrect.  

That’s not the set I have. I have the one with the rechargeable case. I didn’t want ‘another thing to plug in’.

 

https://www.andertons.co.uk/nux-b-7psm-personal-monitoring-system-58ghz/

[dave_bass5]

2 minutes ago, Wombat said:

I haven’t listened to music through them - apart from when they arrived I think I connected them to see if they ‘worked’. I don’t recall any. If I find the gig is getting loud and I turn them up i sometimes get a bit if I’m digging in. But it’s not something I’ve ’noticed’ (until you said) or that has bothered me.

By music I meant the rest of the band, although I did try it with recorded music as well. Its not a gain issue, its just something that seems to be there at the end of the note etc. I couldn't get rid of it no matter how I adjusted things. I must admit I went looking for it as a lot of users have reported this, and the unit I had was a return on Amazon so could have bene faulty. 

On The Nux website they do mention that sound quality isnt top notch, but they focused on usability or something like that. 

[Wombat]

3 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

By music I meant the rest of the band, although I did try it with recorded music as well. Its not a gain issue, its just something that seems to be there at the end of the note etc. I couldn't get rid of it no matter how I adjusted things. I must admit I went looking for it as a lot of users have reported this, and the unit I had was a return on Amazon so could have bene faulty. 

On The Nux website they do mention that sound quality isnt top notch, but they focused on usability or something like that. 

Ah, ok. I’ve not used other IEMs so can’t compare but I find the NUX fine for my needs. I have the whole band in them (at various levels - I don’t usually need a lot of drums as I’m mostly standing right next to them!) and not noticed quality or distortion as an issue.

[SimonK]

Any thoughts re a replacement cable for the ear pieces?

 

(I am coming to the conclusion that there are as many opinions as there are products RE the transmitter/receiver!)