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Theatre Band - Headphone Monitoring question


flutophilus
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Hi,

I occasionally play in a local theatre band - up to now we've been using open foldback monitors but the MD wants to go over to headphone monitoring.

I'm a bit worried as we're only a communty theatre and I don't really know if this is going to work.

Anyway, specifically, can anyone recommend what headphones I should get - I feel that I want open phones so I can still hear ambient sound, partly as I don't really trust the sound engineer to get it right.

Up to now I've been using a Roland Cube 100, with an XLR line out to the sound desk, which I place close to my seat and I usually have some sound from the amp as my personal monitor, then we have a monitor speaker which blends band and microphone.

He's also talking about just DI-ing but I'm not sure what advantage there would be in that, and again I don,t trust them to come up with a decent setup themselves. I get paid MU rates so I don't mind supplying necessary gear myself, though I have a Mesa-Boogie V-twin guitar pre-amp (but no XLR output).

Bass is a Sandberg California with active/passive options.

Any thoughts appreciated.

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I'll post a better reply once I'm not on my iPhone but headphone choice is quite personnal. I use beyer 770s which are quite bass heavy but the sennheiser hd25s are also a popular choice. Or go in ear but if you're doing several several shows a day they're not that comfy unless you go for custom moulds (very expensive). Definitely go closed to avoid bleed into any mics though. Are you using Avioms?

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[quote name='chrkelly' post='659747' date='Nov 19 2009, 11:05 PM'].... the sennheiser hd25s are also a popular choice...[/quote]

I've used these in the pit too, and they worked very well. It wasn't necessary to use them for every song - not all of them had a click track, and there was sufficient monitoring in the pit to play without them - but I actually preferred the sound when using them. We were able to create our own monitoring mix on that gig though, which was amazing. It's a long shot but maybe you could persuade your theatre to go down that route? No idea how much it costs unfortunately.

Jennifer

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It's a device that mounts on your music stand and gives you full control over your own headphone mix. It's kinda like a simplified mixing desk. Very useful if there's not much time for soundchecks. If you're relying on just the soundman I'd recommend buying a cheap in line volume control to prevent yourself being deafened.

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[quote name='chrkelly' post='660350' date='Nov 20 2009, 05:16 PM']It's a device that mounts on your music stand and gives you full control over your own headphone mix. It's kinda like a simplified mixing desk. Very useful if there's not much time for soundchecks. If you're relying on just the soundman I'd recommend buying a cheap in line volume control to prevent yourself being deafened.[/quote]

No we won't be using Avioms, not that sophisticated. Thanks for all the advice anyway.

Cheers

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