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

[wateroftyne]

2 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Getting a good fit was always the problem with me - hence why I went down the custom route.

I may get some moulded tips for the Plunges at some point. I'd always welcome a bit more attentuation.

[SimonK]

2 hours ago, TimR said:

 

Interesting fact. Everyone's ear canals are different lengths and shapes (that should not come as a surprise) which means everyone hears things differently to everyone else. If you swapped your ears for someone else's, your brain would really struggle to understand what it was hearing.

 

The same is true for eyes. What one person's eyes present to the brain as red is different to what someone else's do. 

 

Which is OK, because we calibrate our ears so that an F# is an F# no matter who you are. It does mean that one resonant frequency for one person would be different for someone else. 

 

Philosophers call this "Qualia" which is losely defined as the "what it is like" of experiencing something. The kicker is that we can never know what it is like to experience something from someone else's perspective, and thus the best we have is indirect evidence from others who act/report the same sort of things as we do for a given experience/stimuli. There's also the fact that while not identical, our biology is close enough to other's to infer that what I experience as the colour "red" is most likely pretty similar to what you experience, but we can never know for sure.

 

Probably the most famous discussion on this is Thomas Nagels' "What is it like to be a bat".

 

But this is high falutin philosophy, with IEMs it probably is just minor differences in ear shape!!

[javi_bassist]

Just curious, has anyone of you have tried Vision Ears? It is a brand from Germany that I think they made all custom molded up until now.

[pn_day]

On 25/01/2026 at 08:37, Mokl said:

With much inspiration/guidance from this excellent thread, I'm now 4 gigs in with IEM, with the last being a silent stage at a venue with particularly tricky acoustics.

 

I'd say that so far the success rate in terms of my experience/sound in my ears is at about 60%. Areas I know can be improved are FOH chap not altering my levels mid set (!), seal of the IEMs (if I insert them just right, then there's a definite improvement, getting better at that), then finally the actual tone in my ears. 

 

The last point is the one I'm after advice on. DI from my amp sounds ok but very dry in the ears. It's not so bad when I've got stage sound as some of that leaks through to a fairly pleasing effect. Last gig and rehearsal before it I tried using my HX Stomp with cab and amp sim engaged to try and get a more pleasing sound to my ears (silent stage this time), but in rehearsal guitarist thought my tone suffered out front with the cab sim on, so I ended up running just the amp model, and it wasn't much really much different to my amp DI. No surprise there really.

 

My question is, what do you all do to get a satisfactory bass tone to your ears?! Would a decent DI with cab sim likely sound better than the Stomp, do I just need to experiment more with the Stomp? Answers on a postcard please!! 

 

My personal view - if using the Stomp with in-ears, it is definitely worth spending some time playing with the global EQ. I cut extreme low frequencies, and also quite a lot of highs (roughly 40Hz low cut and something like 6kHz high cut) which helps to reduce the 'harshness'. 

 

Spending some time to get a good seal with your IEMs is important. Looking like a pillock while pulling on your ear to insert your IEMs properly is a price worth paying, IMO. Then again, if you cared what you looked like, you'd probably be up front on vocals or guitar

My experience with the Stomp is that the mic pre and Noble (Regal) models were much better for me than any of the amps/cabs/IRs, plus exploiting a parallel path so you always get 50% of the direct sound really helps with clarity. Then again, I'm a rank amateur and have spent most of my bass-playing life plugging into a DI straight into the house - so your mileage might vary.

 

Phil

 

Edited 1 hour ago by pn_day