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In Ear Monitors - help needed...

MoJoKe

By MoJoKe,
in Accessories and Misc

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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30i9ohf.jpg

After recovering it from Customs, I now have a Woojer strap. I'll keep you posted to how it performs but in terms of build quality, it's pretty good to be fair. Certainly looks up to the job at least. Looking forward to fine tuning it with my monitoring setup - speaking of which, I'll do an in depth review of what I'm currently running with at some point... and show you how compact it is (which is one of the difficulties when carrying around 32 channels). Hopefully I will have some time in the Christmas period to get something drawn up so I can show you how ridiculously good you can get in a small package!

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burno70 Rising Star

burno70

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After the band's primitive forays into IEM, we've now managed to try out a mixer which we are likely to buy. We've just discovered that the aux out (which we are using for different band members mixes) is mono and and send a signal to our left only in ears. I take it we would need head phone amp to get a mono signal in both ears? We're all rockers and very nooby when it comes to this kind of gear.

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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38 minutes ago, burno70 said:

After the band's primitive forays into IEM, we've now managed to try out a mixer which we are likely to buy. We've just discovered that the aux out (which we are using for different band members mixes) is mono and and send a signal to our left only in ears. I take it we would need head phone amp to get a mono signal in both ears? We're all rockers and very nooby when it comes to this kind of gear.

Mono to stereo adapter will sort you and put the same signal into both drivers.

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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All the guys wanting a Wooojer update, I know that Gunsfreddy is looking for an update... I'll be putting it through my monitoring rig tomorrow night so will give it a good in depth review of how well it will work as a monitoring tool on a stage.

I've been enjoying some music with it... some definite faves of mine to try, mostly because the Woojer really enhances what the music is doing but...

Can't Stop Playing (Makes Me High) - Dr Kucho! & Gregor Salto [Oliver Heldens Vocal Edit] ((I think this is what the Woojer was designed for! :P If you haven't browned your pants after this one, your Woojer isn't up loud enough) 

Have to say though, Anne-Marie's Do It Right, is a bit of a belter on the Woojer also... although far from being one of my fave tracks.

Anyway... My only concern at this time is all these tracks that I am listening to have been compressed, mastered and then limited so the tracks, especially the bass, punches hard. So just a short collection of pop stuff I've listened to (just thinking off the top of my head and remember as being quite fun with the Woojer on), e.g. Ghost - Ella Henderson, Come and Get It - John Newman, Shape Of You - Ed Sheeran, Symphony - Clean Bandit, Feels - Calvin Harris, 24k Magic - Bruno Mars (this one is cool), Can't Feel My Face - The Weeknd, What Do You Mean - Justin Bieber, Stitches - Shawn Mendes, Shake It Off - Tayor Swift, Can't Stop The Feeling - Justin Tumberlake, Ariana Grande - One Last Time (PS no taking the fosters out of my choice of music... anyway, Ariana Grande is a badass... check out her isolated vocals... up there with the best). I guess I'm sub consciously focusing on pop at the moment as I seem to be doing a lot of pop gigs at the moment (makes a change from the usual function fodder and disco - not that I'm complaining, I love playing the disco classics)

All of these tracks kick the bass hard... yet if you go back a bit to not so modern recordings... things aren't quite the same...

For example, I also listened to Chaka's version of We Can Work It Out... and the bass doesn't hit nearly as hard - it's a mere tremble in comparison in comparison. It's there but not in the same capacity of songs that have been mixed in modern studios. Same with Stomp! - Brothers Johnson... But having said that, songs like We Are Family, Car Wash,.... the hit hard....And if you want a song that you cant make your mind up about, try Never Too Much - Luther Vandross... it's like that bass is in and out (oo-er) throughout the song at random points (VERY RANDOM!!).

So given that the majority of people that may be using the Woojer in a monitoring capacity are going to be using a mix that is likely off an AUX, it's likely that the mix is going to be pre DSP (e.g. no compression or EQ) with only a sprinkling of EQ that is off that aux out (if at all). SO.... my prediction is that in order to get the most out of the Woojer, you'll need to split a channel, probably for your bass and ideally the kick drum too, compress it hard and send that to your ears mix. By blending both the compressed and uncompressed signals, you are going to get an intelligible bass that kicks hard.

Some people have probably gathered that I run two desks, one for front of house and one for monitoring so I can have a full on DSP enhanced ears mix independent of Front of House... so I'll report on that, as that is going to be similar to what you'd get from say a mastered recording with some compressors kicking hard in the lows... but I'll also talk do a review for you guys from one desk using just the aux and also doing a split as mentioned above.

I've got high hopes for the Woojer, especially as a portable alternative to a big feedback board... but I suspect it may take a bit of tweaking to work so that it hits hard.

Meanwhile, listening to music on it, is an absolute hoot. I'm currently sitting in a hotel room, past midnight, inears in, with my donkey shaking as if I'm sitting on a big 18 subwoofer. If you can pick one up at the right price, it's got to be worth it for that alone :P. The inbuilt amp seems great too... certainly has no problem driving my JH Roxannes LOUD. I shouldn't think it will have any issues with quality loss or being run in line with a EW300 or PSM900, or headphones amp. (Come to think of it, the Woojer may just replace the need for a headphone amp anyway... I'll test it out). I haven't tried it wired yet... only with bluetooth - which has been faultless... although for live use, the bluetooth latency will render it unsuitable for live use... so wired to the desk/inears pack it will have to be!

PS - my current preference for the placement of the bass shakers, is with one on each of my hips. The sensation, weirdly enough,  just seems bigger there than in the chest. I think Tonyf has come to the same conclusion. I am guessing that this will be where it will be most comfortable when wearing a bass too... and it should certainly give more sensation of a BIG speaker behind you when playing.

So... I guess until later, the message is... Stay Tuned. Hope this helps.

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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OK - so I've had about three hours playing. Here's my Woojer findings... In fact, don't read the crossed out text... jump down to my next post.

1. To make this work nicely with an inears mix takes a lot of perseverance. Don't expect a plug and play result.

2. The Woojer, when running it behind a radio receiver of headphone amp, is quite (very) picky when it comes to input from that. Any signal that is too hot results in a particularly nasty clipping sound. Running straight from an aux is better... but remember - there has to be enough oomph coming from your source for the Woojer to action pulsate... So running a low signal and trying to boost it at the Woojer isn't particularly successful. In short, the gain staging has to be bang on... and this can take a bit of work... especially under the pressures of a gig. (Monitors always get the least time, right?). Even if you get things hitting exactly unity however, the results may not be what you want... read on.

3.  The Woojer seems to like stuff under 100Hz, which is understandable - after all, it's meant to be doing the job of a subwoofer. Problem is, on a standard aux feed (eqing on the main out - whilst watching you don't go into clipping) , if you boost too much, two resulting things are at risk - your inears can't take the bass (I was experimenting pushing circa 10dB), or the resulting sound in your inears is just mush. Better results are achieved through subtractive eq... eg. leave the bass where it is (or maybe just boost a little) and bring everything else down.

4. As I alluded to above in my pre monitoring desk predictions, to make this device great, you have to really consider your live mix as a studio mix - so we are looking at running compression and appropriate gain boost before it is summed on the (non clipping) output. Trouble is, for most desks, this is achieved in the post DSP, or post Fader function... so what you do the mix for your inears will impact front of house. What sounds great in your ears may sound too squished for front of house, or vice versa. If you can run a mulitcomp (Behringer guys - Combinator) on your mix, you are going to have a much greater pumping mix to hit your inears chain post the desk. As soon as I started introducing a limiter/compressor, things started to really tighten up and pump on the Woojer. The problem with this is though, for vocalists, you don't want to start compressing too much... or all of a sudden, you'll find that the singers will start backing off the mics as they are a lot more present in the mix.

5. You can get around the issue of 4 by running either a. duplicating channel inputs and assigning to different channels (or direct from your amp maybe - but then you may not get the most feedback due to the lack of compression), so you have an inear channel that goes onto the aux (post DSP) and a front of house channel as usual or b. run a split and use a separate monitor desk. I appreciate that b. is a costly option that doesn't suit everybody, their budgets... or if their aim is to keep things portable.

6. Running a separate aux for your Woojer is cool... so you can put say kick and bass in a separate aux and mix that to your hearts content and send that straight to the Woojer. Downside of this is - more auxes used... or if you are running radio, you have to run two radio to keep your stereo mix... or use focus mode so you have mono going to your ears and the other channel going to your Woojer. Of course, if you are already out of Auxes, this isn't great either.

So in short, compression is the order of the day... and for anybody without a digital desk, with enough channels so they can split etc... it's a big extra complexity in the setup in order to get it working as good as I think it should be. Without doing all of this, the Woojer is a very weak tremor at best. But I have to say, with where I am at the moment (two desks with all the compression lined up and everything EQed nicely so it sounds great) it's a really good device. It has however, taken me best part of three hours of battling to get there... and I have a lot of processing, auxes, radio etc available to me, which I appreciate is not in the domain of most. On a gig, any slight deviation in gain structure and I don't know how long I would entertain it for before I got sick of adjusting the signal to it... and that's if just me had a Woojer... what about if everybody in the band had one.

Anyway, I'm going to stick with it and see what I can learn in the field, so watch this space.

Have a look down a few posts for my real world, in the field, experience...

Edited by EBS_freak
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M@23 Experienced

M@23

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Are many of you lot using a digital setup?

Our desk blew up recently, so we decided to go for an RCF M18. It was cheaper than anything that offered a similar amount of Aux and weighs about a tenth of the old desk. 

It's honestly been a revelation! Probably the best piece of equipment I've bought. We only use in ears for big stages, and our drummer uses an elec kit for at least half our gigs. Being able to adjust your own monitor mix from your phone, mid song is amazing! We play lots of clubs/function rooms and holiday parks, so being able to store 100 mixes saves us a ton of time sound checking. 

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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37 minutes ago, M@23 said:

Good guess! I referred to it once... When I was buying my in ears. I'll back out of the room slowly, then... 

Ha ha. No need to do that. There's guys on here using the Soundcraft UIs, RCFs, Behringer XR16/8s and X32s, Mackie DL, QSC Touchmix, A&H GLD and QU series stuff... amongst other things!

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M@23 Experienced

M@23

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24 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Ha ha. No need to do that. There's guys on here using the Soundcraft UIs, RCFs, Behringer XR16/8s and X32s, Mackie DL, QSC Touchmix, A&H GLD and QU series stuff... amongst other things!

Ah cool. I'll have more of a read. There are very few bands round here using a digital desk... It's probably the best piece of gigging equipment I've used! In terms of streamlining things. 

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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OK - I've taken a Woojer on a proper gig. In fact, the whole four piece band were all sporting Woojers.

Here's the scoop.

EVERYBODY BUY A WOOJER NOW.

Freakin' incredible. Compared to the difficulties that  I was having with the setup whilst running a "virtual sound check" with my rig, when running the setup with a full band, there was no real headaches. I was driving straight off an aux, no compression, no EQ, just straight out the box and everything was kicking hard. I'm not sure why I was getting different results with my virtual sound check but I'm confident that in even the most simplest setups it works.

Setting up was just a case of watching the aux output and making sure that it didn't peak past 0dB - but crucially, ensuring that if running a headphone amp or wireless amp into the Woojer, it was up high enough to register a firm sensation with the woofer but without distortion. Within 5 minutes I got it exactly where I was wanted.

I played with the app and set the response to 3 o'clock which gives the Woojer some extra sensitivity... but I found myself winding it back down a tad on the physical device in the end. After the gig, it felt really weird not having it on anymore. I can't actually see me gigging without it now... and I never was one for missing the "trouser flap" thing. With this round my pelvis, it feels like theres a truck load of air being blasted right at my pelvis. Amazing sensation. Everybody in the band agreed - even the sceptical singer. The drummer thought it was awesome too - and a much more portable solution than the P&D throne/Buttkicker.

The headphone amp in this thing is great... it drives headphones very loud! (In fact, I'm sure you could drive it straight off an aux (as I've stated previously) and it would be great and negate the need for a separate headphone amp).

BIG BIG BIG SMILES. PROPER EXCITED BY IT ALL.

>>> THIS IS A GAME CHANGER <<<.

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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49 minutes ago, pete.young said:

The way that Ariana Grande handled what happened in Manchester means that she is beyond reproach as far as I am concerned. 

Indeed - I was at the very same venue a couple of weeks back. Scary to think I was there at the same place that horrible, horrible act took place.

For Ariana, I guess she will always have that burden to live with. :-( Not her fault in the slightest but I know I would find it very hard to come to terms with.

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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7 minutes ago, knicknack said:

Hey @EBS_freak, this all looks very interesting... I use a bass board but love the idea of something more personal! How do you get your mix from the desk to the Woojer? Seemed like it was phone app situation!

It has a mini jack in socket in addition to a bluetooth link. So you'd run it from the aux on your desk or after a belt pack (or whatever else you may be using)

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EBS_freak Grand Master

EBS_freak

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30 minutes ago, knicknack said:

Aha... so potentially a split of the single from an IEM wireless pack could work? 

You wouldn't need a split. The woojer has a headphone amp (a very good one at that) built into it.

 

so signal chain would be -

 

Stereo/mono aux->woojer->headphones

 

or

 

Stereo/mono aux->wireless pack->woojer->headphones

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