In Ear Monitors

[iamthewalrus]

Hi all,
This is a question aimed at any BC'ers who use in ear monitors....

Our drummer suffers from tinnitus & is looking at trying to obtain a set of in ear monitors. The question is how do they link up to the PA system? Do they plug into a wireless pack or some kind of preamp & into the PA that way?

Any advice or pointers to a website gratefully accepted!

Cheers,
iamthewalrus

[Happy Jack]

There have been a number of topics on this subject over the last few years (I've started some of them ) - have you read through those?

[Matt Golgotha]

I'm just getting into IEM myself. I found the following link useful, which convinced me to get both the Samson S-monitor and also the Sennheiser CX 300 II Headphones, so I could test out IEM live without dropping too much money into it. Still waiting for them to turn up (via ebay).

[url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=286131&page=4"]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.p...6131&page=4[/url]


I have been looking at getting the following triple driver molded In-ears if all goes well, as the exchange rate makes these a bit of a bargain.

[url="http://www.inearsystems.com/"]http://www.inearsystems.com/[/url]

Hope it helps and good luck with it!

[jmsjabb]

[url="http://www.hearingprotection.co.uk"]These guys[/url] provided mine.
Basicly they fill your ear with silicon to cast your ear and then make up the monitors.
I have the single driver with Teflon cables, with the full ear like the T2.
Supposedly 10x better than my Shure EC2s
If anyone wants an interesting read, check out the web site, and for first class service, the company is in Banbury. Highly recommend the company. Was dealt with by Andy himself, who has a very interesting life to talk about and is so passionate about his work.

I found Livewires in the US and they were happy to do them but needed the ear casts. They recommended acs and I got carried away. ( one thing he said was I have very narrow ear tubes which is why I have always found in ear phones painful ) I found the personal touch helpful, as my first impressions were not good enough, and they made a second one.
One BIG thing to note is the acs ones are soft silicon, not acrylic as the livewires ones are. There is no give with the acrylic ones, but most are made in the stuff.
All over the office are signed photos of music performers and F1 drivers who have had ACS make monitors for them.

Take a step back and think about sending money to the US. These are so personal, like a good suit, they need fitting correctly.

[obbm]

I have had a lot of trouble with my ACS T2s. The mouldings are fine however the drivers can't deliver bass at the level I need and just distort. They've been back once and they reckon there is nothing wrong with them so they are relegated to use with the ipod when mowing the lawn. I put a meter on them and they measure 4-ohms which is very low for earphones.

[mcgraham]

Sadly the only face-to-face/direct feedback I've had about ACS products has only been negative. The personal touch is excellent and the staff are exceedingly helpful, which makes it all the sadder when I hear bad things about their products.

There are plenty threads on IEM just have a search in this section and the amp section of the forum.

IEM setup? Cheap mixer and DI will do, just get creative with the connections.

IEM headphones? Your bog standard headphones will do it, in ear canal types or over-ear headphones are marginally better. Try the above combo (mixer + standard headphones) to start on the cheap.

Next step? if you like it and could cope with IEM, then consider some good quality universal fit instead of total custom fits. Good universal fit headphones can rival a number of significantly more expensive custom jobs.

Mark

[Bottle]

I'll echo what Mark has written above - we've used Senns and Shure wireless IEM packs. Professional in-ear-canal buds are exceedingly expensive, but they do work. I've used them, but they irritated my ear canal so dropped them in favour of my iPod buds, but found out fairly quickly they've got no bass extension and fart out too easily. Tried closed back headphones, but look a bit silly wearing them whilst playing in a hall - fine if you're in the studio, though .

Our current PA desk has six auxes - we can send four of them pre-fade to four separate channels of wireless IEM, so our musicians can have separate mixes i.e lead vox/guitar, BV, rhythm section i.e me and the drummer, rhythm gtr etc, keys + w/wind. Also we can push an aux through a separate fader for a general wedge mix for whoever is leading (drummer can have the same mix or we sometimes run a second wedge mix).

Anyway, have a look around - there's some threads on the forum already.

HTH, Ian

[iamthewalrus]

Thanks to everybody who took the time to respond to this, I think our drummer will probably go down the IEM route.

We tried using cans with him on Sunday at rehearsal, but that didn't work out too well

Cheers,
iamthewalrus

[4 Strings]

If he can hear the instruments as he wants already, albeit too loud for his ears, how about him just wearing ear-plugs?

[Bassistclem]

TRy these earphones

[url="http://www.ultimateears.com/_ultimateears/store/products/superfi5eb.php"]http://www.ultimateears.com/_ultimateears/.../superfi5eb.php[/url]

They sound great for plenty of bottom end at a reasonable price, around £110 if you shop around.
They do feel a little bulkier but that's the price you pay for extra bottom end (look at the size of our cabs!!!)
I personally use them on a cable from a small mixer, but agree that if you need to move around you can't compromise on the quality of your wireless system. I've used sennheiser ew300 systems and they seem as good as anything for the money.

BEWARE...I've recently heard that all the available frequencies for IEM and radio mic/guitar systems are to change over the next few years because of the expanding mobile networks. My advice is to but a decent second hand one for now and see where the land lies when the changeover happens. Anyone with the current systems may find them either illegal of with mucho interference!!!