EBS_freak

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1476212800' post='3152428'] I wouldn't want a non active pa system in this day and age, we've got an xair mixer, 2 RCF 735A speakers and two powered db monitors, that will do a typical wedding marquee if I use a large 2x12 bass cab as backline supported by the foh (no need for bins with 735 or 745 which is why they are a grand each),a beer festival or large outdoor gig we won't be doing the PA so it's out of our hands. Having a 1400 watt amp in the back of each speaker rather than dragging more gear around wins for me [/quote] The FR800s are active - they use a fairly standard amp, with the ability to alter the DSP - the cabs for the lowend basically have a different dsp to the tops. I spoke to Alex about this - I would always buy tops and ask him to add the lowend DSP setting to it - seems more versatile that way.

Sorry about the delay - I have been doing some long overdue housekeeping to make room to upload the file! OK, here's a lovely bit of Taylor Swift for you Warts and all - but thats part of the fun isn't it? This was at a pub - you know, those places where it's not the done thing to wear IEMs? In this example, we have vocal mics, 7 drum mics, a guitar mic, bass DI to desk (via EBS Microbass 2 - no amp), 2 keyboards in stereo Died (again no amps on stage) into the desk... oh and a sample trigger thingy. Stage volume was very low - yes, even the guitarist! - and the front of house duties were taken care of by a pair of RCF 745s and 8004s. I should clarify, there are no ambient mics in the setup - any crowd noise is down to spill though the open mics that are on stage. If you feel that this sounds isolated, you can always XY a couple of condensers at the front of the stage to give you a stereo image of the audience. I'm not that bothered by it to be honest - I prefer less stuff to mess up my mix, although as a front person, you may have more of a want for this. (That's fine - remember it's your mix, so even if those mics were there, you don't have to include them in your mix). Please take into account that this is mixed for my inears setup (JH Roxannes) and my preference - e.g. lots of kick and snare and bass! Don't listen to it expecting it to sound like a CD mix or front of house mix! Remember, each set of IEMs have their own sound signature so what may feel like too much/too less of certain frequencies may be fine when using a different set of IEMs. This is just to give you an idea of what you can expect. So here's a bit about the mix - (sorry if it's a bit of a brain dump - it may come across a bit garbled). This is a stereo feed (from 2 auxes) on the desk, into a PSM900. I took the line out of the PSM900 to record this inears mix. The whole band were on stereo IEMs with their own individual mixes. What you hear through your headphones whilst listening to this is what I heard when playing... obviously, this is mixed for me, playing bass. If you are wondering if IEMs are for you, please do listen on decent headphones so you can get an idea of what it would realistically sound like. First up, the bass is set the highest it can be set and then everything else is mixed up to that level. Ultimately, if you find yourself craving more bass, everything else needs to be turned down! This level is crucial, as this is the instrument you need to hear and not distort in your in ears... so I tend to start here, regardless of who's mix it is (obviously other people may not want as much bass as you! ) The kit - The kick drum is compressed to hell and gated - the key is to get this as clean as possible with no end rumble. 65Hz is the key frequency here - it's what gives it the punch in your ears (Same applies for front of house). Pretty much anything under 30hz is rolled off aggressively - although depending on what your IEMs are capable of, you may need to roll off a lot higher as you'll need some serious headroom to make it kick hard. If your inears aren't up to it, you may find the sub frequencies will really muddy up the mix. My JH Audios are fine with it... my ACS, not really. The snare is compressed pretty heavily (to stop it taking your ear drums out) and pushed up high in the mix. I like to hear the kick and snare to lock on to. Trouble is, the snare starts to sound really dry and boxy - so I liven it up a bit with a lashing of reverb. The toms (x3), again, are gated to keep the cymbals under control - the cymbals are the most fatiguing thing that you can have in your ears... so I do my best to control it. I roll a lot of the highs off to help keep the toms sounding clean - but more about the overheads later. The best bit about the toms of course, is the ability to have fun with the pans... so yeah, theres some hard panning on the toms, mostly for my own amusement. The overheads as I stated, are tamed quite heavily - lots of cut on the high frequencies and a hpf to keep the mud out. The overheads are a bit of a nightmare as they tend to pick everything up (especially if you are on a relatively small stage) - on this gig, the guitarist was running a guitar amp, so there is an inevitable bit of bleed... Again, I like to pan these hard left and right for in ears as it makes the kit sound a lot wider in the mix. The key thing is, these are the mics that are going to fatigue your ears quickly... so be very wary of them! You may have heard some extra percussion - not too much in this track - but there doesn't need to be much processing as it's a spdsx... so pretty reliable at delivering a decent sound. Again, despite being mono foh, you can have some fun panning the sounds in your monitor mix. I add a tiny bit of reverb on the toms, overheads and spdsx - nowhere near the amount as applied on the snare - just to give it a more live, natural feel. I think there's some claves in the bridge thing - panned right) AND yes... you could probably get away with two mics on the kit if you wanted... The keys are run in stereo in the ears - but are mono front of house - again, I pan these around, hard right and left, or depending where I am compared to the keys player. EQ to taste, again, I tame the top to stop the ear fatigue - and if the patches have no reverb, a smidgen of reverb to make them sound less sterile. Guitar - usually the hardest - as the volume can be all over the place, especially if the guitarist hasn't sorted their patches. So again, compressor comes to the rescue to help even out the low and high volumes. You will probably hear that the guitar solo doesn't really pop out as much as you'd expect - it certainly did front of house - but in your ears, that's not a very useful thing to happen if you are trying to keep your ears fresh for as long as you can! I tend to apply a mild gate to cut some of the spill when the guitarist isn't playing - but this will depend on venue and proximity to other sound sources - on this gig we were quite spread out so the only spill that was really a problem was the sub low bass coming back from the front of house subs - but a HPF at 200Hz cleared that up - no problems! Again, panned to where I wanted to place him in the mix! (He was actually to my left) Vocals - eqed to taste, again, I tend to tame the top end, HPF to keep the crap out - most of the spill from vocals usually comes from the drums so I try and keep the drummer and vocalists as far apart as possible. Vocals will fatigue your ears quickly - especially female vocals, so keep them under control! You'll notice that the two vocalists are quite far panned. Two reasons, they are placed how they were on the stage compared to me - but crucially, when I sing (my vocal is bang in the middle of the mix - not that I sing on this example), I find it a lot easier to pitch against the other singers. If you try and sing against the playback - you should find this. When your voice is central in your IEM mix, singing becomes even easier. On the main outs, I use the main eq for the aux to tailor depending upon which IEMs I am using. The ACS don't handle anywhere near what my Roxannes do - so I tend to tame the bass here... and also put a compressor on the main output, just in case somebody does something soft like drop the mic. Last thing - I'm sure that some guys are going - hang on, how are you eqing and compressing the channels that are on the aux independent of the foh? Simple, I split the inputs - for example, one vocal takes up two channels - so you have a channel for the front of house mix and a channel for your IEM mixes - Like having a separate FOH and Monitor desk in one place! So that's a brief overview I guess, hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think! [b]Rename the file to have a mp3 extension[/b]

OK - I'll grab 30 secs or a few clips or something from the HUGE file and post them up later somehow.

Would anybody be interested in actually hearing one of my inears mixes? For shits and giggles I recorded it off the back of my PSM900 from my last gig... which happened to be in a pub (pubs and IEMs can coexist!)

Yamaha MG06?

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1476101074' post='3151228'] You sir, are a star. Again. Very valid points indeed. I liked the idea of having one single small connector on the pack on your belt rather than two big XLR type and their pair of cables hanging down. Less drag - and as I am hardwired on my bass two, thats three cables that hopefully could have been replaced with a smaller IEM cable and single instrument lead. You are quite right about a point of weakness and that you'd always have to carry a spare with the same LEMO connector. The XLR's at the other end are no problem of course. I've looked in to the limiter and you are quire right! Not what I was expecting. I suppose my thought process was that if I were and will be doing more dep gigs with kit I am not familiar with, then having an additional brick wall limiter or EQ if necessary would form some extra belt n' braces should I get the wrong thing sent to my lug'oles!! I would of course hope that the IEM mix, from whatever source would be configured well and an enjoyable experience but kit and user experience can vary wildly. This week's gig it has to be said was an absolute joy to listen to though the '64 A8's! [/quote] If you are worried about the physical size and mass of xlr cable, make up your own cable from some 2 way multicore. Should give you the function without two weighty cables. OR... you may want to use something like this - http://www.jumpaudio.net/ixm.html - so you just get 1 cable going to you and your bass...

With regards to monitoring the front of house PA - if your keyboard player's patches are correct and your guitarists boosts are correct, then your front of house should stay consistent because as your ears tires and players are tempted to turn up, it's only their own personal mix that is being impacted, not front of house. So using IEMs may actually improve your chances of a decent FOH mix when you are not running with your own foh engineer.

Add the RCF 735 / 745 to your list to look out. 3 and 4 inch voice coils in the highs - meaning your vocals are going to sound killer, freeing up the main driver to work with the lower frequencies. You can easily get by without subs with either of these units - and they'll quite happily take bass and kick drum.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1476043009' post='3150808'] Has anyone had any experience with the Shure P9HW Wired system or similar? I like the look of this as the wearing on the belt, you haven't got the weight of two XLR cables and connectors. I found some talk of a P4 & P6HW too. On board parametric and limiter also sound convenient on the P9 without the additional cost of wireless kit. Thoughts anyone? Alternatives? [/quote] The P9HW still requires XLRs - it has a splitter cable that goes to two XLR cannons. I personally don't like it as I see it as a weakness that is bound to fail on you st some point - and you are unlikely to be able to source a spare easily. The EQ on the pack is fairly primitive compared to what you can do with a decent desk and the limiter is pretty primitive too - all it does is set a max volume on the volume knob so if you turn it up it doesn't get any louder.

I have always found DR Hi Beams to be the ultimate string for me. Long lasting, feel great and sound amazing. I have however, just tried a new string. Additional tension and still great sounding and feel great - but just a bit more ridgid and an even stronger B. It's DR Lo Riders!

I stand corrected - JH are now doing 3D printing too!

Also remember - the more they are communicating, the less they are building!

http://www.analogplanet.com/content/analogplanet-visits-jerry-harvey-audio#zPqDjvcJFuyxf33c.97 Thought some of you guys would find this interesting - I know that there's a few tour videos about (UE and 1964 have some great ones) but I find it interesting that Jerry Harvey stuff is very much still hand made as opposed to Logitech's operation at UE (which Jerry founded) that seems to have gone wholeheartedly into 3d printing. I think 64 Audio is that way now also.

Primarily a Wal, Rickenbacker 4001 and a Hofner violin bass. Bet you can't figure out who's basslines I was learning bass to at the time... Funnily enough, I was going to pull the trigger on a Wal but never did. Could have kicked myself. I don't really hanker after any of them nowadays... although the Wal would be nice to have in the collection.

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1475053189' post='3142570'] It's tempting. How many amps do you get out of that setup? I have a few digital pedals [/quote] It's not so much the amps - it's the mAh for all your pedals that you want to add up. So you'll get 2450mAh (2450mA for one hour effectively - so if you want to draw say, 4900mA, you'll get half an hours usage) if you use XX eneloops or 1900mAh if you use the standard eneloops. Here's an interesting list - [url="http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-29/1687263-"]http://www.harmonyce...lla-29/1687263-[/url] Although with some of the beefier digital pedals you are going to be looking at mAh ratings into probably a few hundred now. What ever you do, if you load the underside of your pedal board with batteries, you have options for changing them over between sets etc... or just putting them all in parallel for a mega battery pack.

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1474994659' post='3142159'] I use something like this with eight Eneloop high capacity rechargeable AA batteries in. Being rechargeables, they are 1.2V batteries, giving me a 9.6V output. Great for pedals. Some of these enclosures need rewiring for the correct polarity but it's a 5 minute job. [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/8-AA-12V-Battery-Holder-Case-Enclosed-Box-With-On-Off-Switch-/262096603493?hash=item3d062cc965:g:rBMAAOSwx-9WxT1T"]http://www.ebay.co.u...BMAAOSwx-9WxT1T[/url] [/quote] I've done the same in the past too. In fact, I've had a couple because some of the digital fx (and even those small delays) pedals can be quite demanding. You could run them in parallel - but I just split the two packs between different sets of pedals. Just got into the habit of charging them after every gig - even though it wasn't strictly necessary. Great for the studio too - when you want to get things as quiet as possible.

Ah, capturing synth sounds... always a challenge. Simplest get by? Palm muted with fast envelope as stated above.

I have got a neotech strap that I had shortened to "short" when I used to play my bass around my chin. Always found them to be always a little too long for me, hence the tailoring. I don't know whether or not it helped my back - but it was very comfortable when I was using it.

[quote name='largo' timestamp='1475096426' post='3143099'] So, this SLED technology is just snake oil? Claims none of the low-end loss that normal ambient ports would have... [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ieOF7OjKw"]https://www.youtube....h?v=P7ieOF7OjKw[/url] [/quote] Without actually trying it, I can't say whether it's snake oil or not. I get the concept and it would seem to fly. Only one thing, my ACS Live system enables fine tuning of the ambient feed via the pack - I do change that quite a lot, especially if the drummer is hitting hard... On softer songs, I'll find myself letting in more ambient sound. The SLED solution works on a fixed filter - so I don't know if I would find it frustrating that I'm stuck with a fixed filter. Interesting nonetheless. But the lack of dual lows would take it out the equation for me anyway.

I would wager that the onstage sound for the Sting performance was low and to be fair, it's not a prolonged performance time, so risk is greatly reduced. It's prolonged usage and the temptation to turn the volume up on the IEM which is left in your ear which gives you your problems. One ear plug would definitely be a safer option as it would lessen the volume difference between the two ears that causes the user to turn up in the first place. Despite what the marketing says, anything that reduces isolation and allows the outside in, is going to lead to a loss of bass... It's true that 64 Audio and JH Audio both have an ambient port option - but you'll see very few artists with them. The only reason that they are there, is because people seem to insist that they need them. To be fair though, if you are a singer and want to feel more ambience and don't care about losing low end, this may be a desirable option. It easy to demonstrate why ambient ports are a bad idea - take any earphone that seals against your ear... listen to some music... and pull it out slightly - it will become very apparent which frequencies rapidly vanish. If you must have ambient - do it with mics... or use something like the ACS Live system. If you use the latter - which is really good, you'll get good results... however, for me, their inears don't have enough headroom in the bass and they aren't interested in doing a dual low driver. This is, however, all very expensive. Maybe you should try something like a cheap condenser on a microphone and just stick it somewhere at the side of the stage. If you are in mono, it won't sound too weird but may give you seem of that ambient sound you are looking for. Condenser mics can be had really cheap - I haven't looked but I bet you could get one for less than twenty quid. Pretty much anything can be reshelled as long as it is balanced armature based. Personally, I wouldn't want to be investing in a mould for a triple though! (But thats just me!)

[quote name='Dan Dare' timestamp='1475074783' post='3142840'] For more money, Nexo, Fohhn (what I use) or D&B Audiotechnik (if you're feeling flush). [/quote] In that case, throw Claire Brothers and L-Acoustics into the mix! A Danley Jehrico may be exactly what is being looked for!

PS - absolutely NO AMBIENT PORTS. You'll lose all your bass. A good bass response is reliant on a good seal. If you break that seal for an ambient port, say goodbye to your bass. (See above about micing up stuff you want to hear - e.g. that may even be a mic on stage so you can hear bandmates talking between themselves.

Ha - I've just written a private message to pretty much to this same effect. This site is legit (and where tonyf keys player got his from too! err... I may have a pair too - inears freak) [url="http://www.eglobalcentral.co.uk/logitech-ultimate-ears-ue900s-headphone-en.html"]http://www.eglobalce...adphone-en.html[/url] - currently £169 compared to the £279.99 at [url="http://www.custom-inearmonitors.co.uk/iems/ultimate-ears-ue-900s-quad-driver-in-ear-monitors.html"]http://www.custom-in...r-monitors.html[/url] Not bad for a UE product - and as tony says, a reshell will come in at around £200. Less than £400 (subject to impression taking costs), is not to be sniffed at for a set of custom quads. You'd be looking closer to £700+ ordinarily (as it looks like you've discovered!) For a bass player, I would always recommend a minimum of a quad driver with dual lows... to give you the headroom you'll be craving in the lows and the lower mids. If you are feeling "isolated" there are some ways around this... have a look through the big inears thread - [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/205633-in-ear-monitors-help-needed/"]http://basschat.co.u...rs-help-needed/[/url] - or ask a question in there so we can keep all the relevant information together. In short, you should not be taking your inears out. Think of the only thing that you can hear is what your desk sends you - so if you want to hear the audience, mic them up - but don't send them through the front of house mix!)