Let’s take a quick look at In Ear Monitors or IEM’s. I’ll briefly touch on the different types, and what the differences are.
Starting with the obvious, look at how the unit is built. Plastic or metal. Common sense tells us the metal unit will hold up better and is more road worthy.
Frequencies. The number of frequencies available can be very crucial the more dates you do or the closer you live to a larger city. The airwaves have gotten much more congested with more groups going wireless everything, and digital television has found it’s way into the mix of signals floating around out there. Different units also have more presets than others making it more user friendly. However, if you’re comfortable with programming a VCR you can probably handle changing frequencies for an IEM unit.
Other features may include dynamic control, and different “mix” modes for stereo or mono operations. A unit that offers “mix” mode in mono mode can be helpful if your budget only allows for one transmitter and several receivers. In this case you could have a vocal line and a track line and adjust your IEM pack accordingly.
Now when it comes the actually ear pieces there are a lot of choices. The are custom fitted ear pieces that require a mold of your ear, then there are generic fit pieces. There also three different driver type of pieces. There are single driver, dual driver, and now even triple driver. The triple driver is mostly beneficial to drummers, bass player, and can be heaven on earth for a bass singer, but are very pricey. As the name indicates, they have three separate drivers in the ear piece which extends frequency response and reproduces lower frequencies better. Dual drivers are probably the most common. It’s got very good frequency response and comes in many different forms. This is the form that most musicians and vocalists that I know, use. And the single driver, is the most economical, but doesn’t sound nearly as good as the dual and mostly comes in the generic fit IEM’s.
We all know the benefits of IEM’s. You have your own personal mix, the front of house sound for the audience it highly increased in quality, and less chance for feedback. There are a few down sides. The biggest one is you don’t get that in your face monitor sound and can get disconnected from you audience some. One option to greatly help this, however is to place one or two microphones at the lip of the stage pointing towards the listeners and mix them just into the IEM mixes. This will give you that wedge feel in your ears. Try it sometime.
My opinion as an engineer, IEM’s are a dream come true. Less stage noise means my mix is strictly all house speakers and can be at a comfortable volume. The more stage noise the louder your house has to be to sound correct.
Happy ear monitoring.
Josh Hoevelmann
Author: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Written: 04/01/2004
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Josh,
That should be I TRIED it. oops
Nice article, Josh....now, please explain to us what the actual purpose of the ear monitors is....! Some of us are not technically educated out here, and I personally have wondered what the monitors are for. I have even heard some say that the words are fed to the singers through them. Would appreciate a quick explanation.
Hey Josh very precise article.Ear monitors actually give the performer/singer a more professional sound because they up close and personal and allow a better individual connection with the music.I like them,so much better than stage monitors!Thanks!God Bless!
Diane, ear monitors were not intended for people to have their words fed to them, but they can be. I still recommend learning all of the words. Ear monitors are intended to give the musician a peronalized mix without having to share a mix like with a floor monitor. It also helps with cutting down on stage noise which can increase the quality of your house sound. Ear monitors work best when you can have your own individual mix. Again, feeding cues through ear monitors is not a common use.
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