In Ear Monitors - help needed...

[EBS_freak]

Always the guitarist and the drummer....

And are those valve watts? Or 80s FET?

Seems like your job of being the techie one seems to be cemented early on...

[intime-nick]

i think it may be steam powered 😁😁😁

that does seem to be the case - maybe it's a bass player thing but i do seem to inherit the job in pretty much every band i join !

[EBS_freak]

Maybe so!

Pretty much every band that I know of bar only a few, it seems like the bass player is usually the one that is valued the least musically (grr) but is pretty much the go to person for all things technical.

[mrtcat]

9 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Maybe so!

Pretty much every band that I know of bar only a few, it seems like the bass player is usually the one that is valued the least musically (grr) but is pretty much the go to person for all things technical.

Amen brother

[alexgrout_]

On 04/01/2019 at 10:47, EBS_freak said:

Cool... that's the idea! Although if you change your se215s for some ZS10s (less than 40 quid), you'll suddenly discover a whole world of bass response that your haven't been getting through a set of 215s. Be wary though - it may set you off on a journey of IEM addiction.

Ok I’ll try some ZS10’s

[Kirky]

On 03/01/2019 at 14:11, jrixn1 said:

Also see this thread - https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/304769-ambient-in-ear-mix-on-a-budget-zoom-h2n-recorder-and-in-ear-monitors/

 

Anyone else having trouble viewing the video on this thread?

[EBS_freak]

13 minutes ago, Kirky said:

Anyone else having trouble viewing the video on this thread?

I think @Dood has taken it down now.

[EBS_freak]

@Kirky this video kinda sums it up though - 

 

[Graham]

Tonight will be my first gig using IEM - ZS10s, P2 and the X Air app on my phone.

Any tips for things to do or avoid?

[EBS_freak]

17 minutes ago, Graham said:

Tonight will be my first gig using IEM - ZS10s, P2 and the X Air app on my phone.

Any tips for things to do or avoid?

Make sure you gain things properly so you don’t get distortion. Take your time to get your mix right, little changes at a time.

Have fun - and feed back how you got on tomorrow!

[CameronJ]

Well this thread is quite an epic read! Thanks to all for contributing - it’s an excellent resource.

I’ve already gone FRFR but have to leave my main monitor at home while on the road, so the portability of good quality IEMs seem like a logical step for me. At the moment most of what I do is through a set of Sennheiser Momentum Around Ear cans which are very lovely. These take on all duties from listening to music or watching videos on my phone or iPad via Bluetooth to monitoring my vocal looping rig or bass playing via Helix (wired with an OBBM combo monitor cable) to gaming on my laptop via bluetooth again. The Sennheisers handle it all very well but when it comes to monitoring I’ve always preferred in ears to over ears. This is especially true in a live performance context. In the past it’s always been through consumer grade buds from Sennheiser, Sony or Shure but while perfectly adequate I’ve never been truly wowed by the fit or the quality of any of these. 

Which leads me to this thread. It seemed like the UE6’s were the clear choice for me in terms of price-performance (on paper at least as I haven’t heard them) but I’m very intrigued by @intime-nick‘s experience with Lugs. Their prices seem hard to beat. How would you compare the Lugs to your UE6 Pros?

[intime-nick]

4 hours ago, CameronJ said:

Well this thread is quite an epic read! Thanks to all for contributing - it’s an excellent resource.

I’ve already gone FRFR but have to leave my main monitor at home while on the road, so the portability of good quality IEMs seem like a logical step for me. At the moment most of what I do is through a set of Sennheiser Momentum Around Ear cans which are very lovely. These take on all duties from listening to music or watching videos on my phone or iPad via Bluetooth to monitoring my vocal looping rig or bass playing via Helix (wired with an OBBM combo monitor cable) to gaming on my laptop via bluetooth again. The Sennheisers handle it all very well but when it comes to monitoring I’ve always preferred in ears to over ears. This is especially true in a live performance context. In the past it’s always been through consumer grade buds from Sennheiser, Sony or Shure but while perfectly adequate I’ve never been truly wowed by the fit or the quality of any of these. 

Which leads me to this thread. It seemed like the UE6’s were the clear choice for me in terms of price-performance (on paper at least as I haven’t heard them) but I’m very intrigued by @intime-nick‘s experience with Lugs. Their prices seem hard to beat. How would you compare the Lugs to your UE6 Pros?

To my untrained ears, there is nothing in it (UE6 vs LUGS quads - 2x low, 1xmid, 1xhigh arrangement).  There is a price difference of course and that’s down to a few factors in my eyes - recognised brand vs relatively unknown brand, nicer presentation of the UEs (what you’d expect from a bigger manufacturer - nice box, branding, flashier cables etc) all of which means very little when in use and in no way reflects on the quality or value for money aspect of the LUGS product  

To be totally honest, I’m using my UE6s more than my quads which is purely down to them being a better fit - this is not a reflection on the quality of the LUGS moulds,  but is totally down to the shoddy impressions I had done at Boots (which I didn’t realise at the time and paid over the odds for). Rob @ LUGS has now started using the same 3D scanning / 3D printed shells that are used by almost all the other manufacturers and I will have zero hesitation going back to him to get my current LUGS reshelled with some correct impressions (when I ever get the time !).  The quality of service from LUGS has been outstanding as has, I should add, the custom IEM company (where I got my UE6s from)

as I now run zero backline in one of the bands I’m in, I always like to take a spare set of IEMs as that’s my only way of monitoring so although it may seem a bit extravagant, I see it as being no different to carrying a backup amp. 

As has been mentioned on here numerous times, the biggest breakthrough is getting custom moulded IEMs (irrespective of manufacturer - with the exception of ACS, ahem 😉), running in stereo, with a personalised mix - it’s the biggest, most important change I’ve made in 35 or so years of playing and I really struggle to understand why it’s not the accepted thing nowadays 

[EBS_freak]

I haven’t got direct experience of the the Lugs quads but based on other quads that I have experience of, I can tell you what the difference are likely to be based on the differences in the driver types. The UEs have a a balanced armature in the high and a dynamic driver in the mid and another in the low. The Lugs have 4 balanced armatures and Nick asked for his to be configured as one in the high, one in the mid and a dual low.

In a nutshell, the following is generally true of balanced armatures -

1. Incredibly detailed

2. Moderate headroom

3. Not especially good at bass

4. Clinical sound signature

5. More expensive than dynamics

and generally... for dynamics (although this depends on the spec/size of driver) -

1. Not as detailed as balanced armature (but still detailed!)

2. Greater headroom

3. Good at bass

4. Warmer sound signature

5. Cheaper than balanced armatures

6. Larger casing and earlier models needed porting

So looking at a standard balanced armature quad with dual lows, the presence of two drivers in the lows gives increased bass response and crucially headroom. The bass is very tight and precise.

Compare that to a UE6, there only needs to be one dynamic in the low to give a similar bass response and amount of headroom and the presence of a dynamic in the mids tends to make the UE6 have a notably warmer timbre than its balanced armature based counterparts. The trade off of is that the definition in the lows and mids may appear to be a bit more “smeared” - but unless you A/B the two together, I would wager most people wouldn’t even notice. The UE6 retains the balanced armature in the highs for all that lovely sparkle, detail and “air” which dynamics don’t produce nearly as well as a balanced armature.

So why UE6 - they typically come in cheaper than the quads from the main manufacturers but offer similar performance in the lows - which is the attribute you spend most of your money on to achieve. The UE6 gives a performance to rival quads at a cheaper price.

Lugs however, being a relatively newcomer to the scene - are producing very budget friendly high driver count IEMs that undercut the bigger names. After exchanging PMs with Robert on fb, I’m pretty confident he knows what he’s doing and has plenty of experience in the market in previous jobs... but as I say, I’ve no direct experience of having any Lugs in my own lugs.

Worth noting, there’s a lot of newcomers to IEMs that are shoving many drivers in custom shells without any regard for damping, tuning or phase alignment... so be aware for looking for bargains... cos you could be buying tripe.

One of the significant differences between the big boys and the smaller companies is that they have the buying power to spec drivers to manufacturer out deficiencies in the inherent problems you get when you start combining multiple drivers into an IEM design. For example, 64, UE and JH all have their own proprietary drivers whereas other manufacturers make do with whatever they can get “off the shelf” so to speak.

Hope this helps!

 

Edited January 6, 2019 by EBS_freak

[CameronJ]

Thanks for the detailed replies guys. Much appreciated. More questions from me now 

Re: getting impressions done, is there realistically any difference between getting them done with an IEM manufacturer themselves vs. somewhere like Specsavers? In theory they’re both doing exactly the same thing, right?

Also, Lugs appear to do IEMs with increasing driver count up to 8 per ear (which cost the same as the UE6!) will I get any real world benefit from going for more than 4 drivers? Especially since I won’t be playing on any stupidly loud stages any time soon. The Lugs price list describes their 5 driver version as having another low driver, suggesting 1xhigh, 1xmid and 3xlow drivers. Would it be beneficial to respec that as 1xhigh, 2xmid and 2xlow for more balance or am I overthinking things? Also, I’m not an audio engineer and have little to no knowledge of IEM construction so I’m likely talking rubbish!

Lastly, I assume the more drivers in a shell, the larger the IEM becomes and the more like an Android I will look?

[Graham]

So last night went pretty well, I could hear myself very clearly - to the point where it was highlighting when my technique was less than perfect and it has confirmed that I want a compressor.

The tone in ears was a bit thinner than how I remember it out of the wedges, but that might be down to the very dead strigs on my jazz.

Downsides, because it was a small venue (pub) with a small stage space, there was no guitar going through the PA, but I could hear it fairly well bleed through the IEM. Also, the singer forgot I was using these so there were two wedges on stage, so I wasn't always able to tell what was coming out of those and what was in my ears.

The X Air app was tempermental, both on my phone and on the singer's Ipad. On my phone it kept losing the connection, on the Ipad it was very laggy and slow to respond - anyone experienced this before? Do we need a wireless booster or something? 

I ended up switching off the wi-fi on my phone to make sure it wasn't interfering or something. That meant I didn't change the mix until the break (I'd set the kick too high and left the backing vocals out), but when I did it was good.

Overall it was a positive experience and I'm looking forward to getting more to grips with the system over the next few gigs.

[EBS_freak]

1 hour ago, CameronJ said:

Thanks for the detailed replies guys. Much appreciated. More questions from me now 

Re: getting impressions done, is there realistically any difference between getting them done with an IEM manufacturer themselves vs. somewhere like Specsavers? In theory they’re both doing exactly the same thing, right?

Also, Lugs appear to do IEMs with increasing driver count up to 8 per ear (which cost the same as the UE6!) will I get any real world benefit from going for more than 4 drivers? Especially since I won’t be playing on any stupidly loud stages any time soon. The Lugs price list describes their 5 driver version as having another low driver, suggesting 1xhigh, 1xmid and 3xlow drivers. Would it be beneficial to respec that as 1xhigh, 2xmid and 2xlow for more balance or am I overthinking things? Also, I’m not an audio engineer and have little to no knowledge of IEM construction so I’m likely talking rubbish!

Lastly, I assume the more drivers in a shell, the larger the IEM becomes and the more like an Android I will look?

Re: impressions - there shouldn’t be any difference between where you have your impressions taken but realistically there is. The main issues are that most ear impressions are taken for hearing aids and those impressions don’t don’t go past the second bend in the ear. There are instructions supplied by IEM manufacturers but overall, the quality of the impression depends upon how much care is take by the person taking the impression to insure that it is good. Additionally, it’s really, really important that a bite block is used. For standard IEM impression, a half open (that’s referring to your mouth) position should be used. For singers that belt it out, you may want to consider a fully open impression. The amount of clothed mouth impressions that I’ve seen pasted on Instagram makes me want to facepalm. I’ve even seen at shows that I’ve been working at, impressions taken whilst the person having those impressions taken is in full conversation with the person that is taken that impression. The chances of the resulting IEMs fitting properly is zero. I would always have impressions taken by somebody that deals with IEMs over a standard audiologist that doesn’t know a great deal specifically about IEMs - but that’s just me.

With regard to Lugs quad, I don’t believe their standard offering is a dual low - Nick requested the dual low in his quad. I think their dual low comes in on their fiver driver model.

OK driver count is an interesting subject - the more drivers you add to a design, the more difficult it is to get them sounding right due to the problems of getting the crossovers right and crucially the phase alignment right. In short, you will get added benefit from adding drivers because the headroom will increase significantly however, that is no good if the phase alignment and frequency curves all go to pot. Due to crossover designs in IEMs being largely physical (done by damping etc) it’s a notoriously difficult art to master - and as I mentioned before, the larger manufacturers buy themselves out of the problems of multidriver tuning issues by having balanced armatures designed to their spec to fit in with their crossover designs. Smaller companies can simply not afford to R and D costs associated with minimum orders required from the balanced armature manufacturers... let alone the resulting order quantities to make it financial viable. For example, the quad balanced armatures of 64 and JH are are single tubed quad armatures in a single case. That alone helps solve a lot of the phase problems that you would get if you start trying to combine 4 single drivers into one tube. Similarly, if you ditch the idea of a single tube, you’d have to ensure tube length is exactly equal and damped exactly the same (remember that these things are hand assembled and scoped for phase coherence - so this would be VERY labour intensive) for each ear and the of course, they would have to match left and right. Then there’s the problem of housing the tubes in the outlet that goes into your ears - there’s a finite amount of space there and again, due to the shape of your ear not being uniform, an extra source of introducing phase issues. In reality, you can’t do this successfully unless you are having those multidriver units made for you. Having said that, you can get dual housed balanced armatures off the shelf - and it would explain why a lot of custom IEM manufacturers stop at a 6 driver IEM. (Dual top, dual mid, dual low with 3 bores at the output).

With regards to size, there is a difference in physical size with driver count but this is not as significant as you may think. My 12 driver Roxannes were quite big (but not so you would notice them particularly) - and that was down to the screw on cable fixing more than anything. My 12 driver 64 audios are actually pretty tiny in comparison - that are about 1mm thicker than my other half’s triple driver 64s that she uses for the gym. The biggest influence on an IEM driver size is actually your ear. If your concha (check out pic on google images if not sure) is small, then obviously, there is less space to cram in drivers, therefore the IEM will have to be built out more to fit in the drivers. In reality, it’s a non issue - most ears will accommodate high driver IEMs without you looking like Shrek. Even the 18 driver from 64 is physically pretty small - they certainly know how to cram them in.

 

[EBS_freak]

1 hour ago, Graham said:

So last night went pretty well, I could hear myself very clearly - to the point where it was highlighting when my technique was less than perfect and it has confirmed that I want a compressor.

The tone in ears was a bit thinner than how I remember it out of the wedges, but that might be down to the very dead strigs on my jazz.

Downsides, because it was a small venue (pub) with a small stage space, there was no guitar going through the PA, but I could hear it fairly well bleed through the IEM. Also, the singer forgot I was using these so there were two wedges on stage, so I wasn't always able to tell what was coming out of those and what was in my ears.

The X Air app was tempermental, both on my phone and on the singer's Ipad. On my phone it kept losing the connection, on the Ipad it was very laggy and slow to respond - anyone experienced this before? Do we need a wireless booster or something? 

I ended up switching off the wi-fi on my phone to make sure it wasn't interfering or something. That meant I didn't change the mix until the break (I'd set the kick too high and left the backing vocals out), but when I did it was good.

Overall it was a positive experience and I'm looking forward to getting more to grips with the system over the next few gigs.

Don’t hide the problem with a compressor - sort out your technique! 😛 It’s true though, IEMs will reveal lots about your (and your band mates) performances! Don’t worry though, out front nobody will notice what you notice!

OK the tone being thinner is going to be thinner because you haven’t got the colouration of your bass cab/monitor adding weight to the tone. I’ve mentioned earlier in the thread about running a separate mixer for monitor use but if you have enough free channels on your mixing desk, you can split your input and have one bass channel for FOH and one bass channel specifically for your ears. This way you can EQ in a lot more low end and start adding compression independently of what is happening FOH. I set this up with stingraypete not too long ago on his xr16 and I believe @intime-nick does the same on his xr18? It’s not difficult to do once you have you head around routing on your desk.

As for bleed - make sure your IEMs are up loud enough to get over the ambient bleed. It may only be a couple of dB to make all the difference. The guitar amp - if you can, always mic it into the desk even if it doesn’t go foh - it enables you to take a direct feed into your IEMs on your aux, you just leave the slider down for foh. The less bleed you get from the wedges, the better.

im guessing you were using the onboard WiFi on your mixer? Get an external router - the onboard ones are rubbish. Your lag and drop out issues will then vanish.

Stick with it - I hope your first venture out showed you the benefits!

[CameronJ]

1 hour ago, EBS_freak said:

Re: impressions - there shouldn’t be any difference between where you have your impressions taken but realistically there is. The main issues are that most ear impressions are taken for hearing aids and those impressions don’t don’t go past the second bend in the ear. There are instructions supplied by IEM manufacturers but overall, the quality of the impression depends upon how much care is take by the person taking the impression to insure that it is good. Additionally, it’s really, really important that a bite block is used. For standard IEM impression, a half open (that’s referring to your mouth) position should be used. For singers that belt it out, you may want to consider a fully open impression. The amount of clothed mouth impressions that I’ve seen pasted on Instagram makes me want to facepalm. I’ve even seen at shows that I’ve been working at, impressions taken whilst the person having those impressions taken is in full conversation with the person that is taken that impression. The chances of the resulting IEMs fitting properly is zero. I would always have impressions taken by somebody that deals with IEMs over a standard audiologist that doesn’t know a great deal specifically about IEMs - but that’s just me.

With regard to Lugs quad, I don’t believe their standard offering is a dual low - Nick requested the dual low in his quad. I think their dual low comes in on their fiver driver model.

OK driver count is an interesting subject - the more drivers you add to a design, the more difficult it is to get them sounding right due to the problems of getting the crossovers right and crucially the phase alignment right. In short, you will get added benefit from adding drivers because the headroom will increase significantly however, that is no good if the phase alignment and frequency curves all go to pot. Due to crossover designs in IEMs being largely physical (done by damping etc) it’s a notoriously difficult art to master - and as I mentioned before, the larger manufacturers buy themselves out of the problems of multidriver tuning issues by having balanced armatures designed to their spec to fit in with their crossover designs. Smaller companies can simply not afford to R and D costs associated with minimum orders required from the balanced armature manufacturers... let alone the resulting order quantities to make it financial viable. For example, the quad balanced armatures of 64 and JH are are single tubed quad armatures in a single case. That alone helps solve a lot of the phase problems that you would get if you start trying to combine 4 single drivers into one tube. Similarly, if you ditch the idea of a single tube, you’d have to ensure tube length is exactly equal and damped exactly the same (remember that these things are hand assembled and scoped for phase coherence - so this would be VERY labour intensive) for each ear and the of course, they would have to match left and right. Then there’s the problem of housing the tubes in the outlet that goes into your ears - there’s a finite amount of space there and again, due to the shape of your ear not being uniform, an extra source of introducing phase issues. In reality, you can’t do this successfully unless you are having those multidriver units made for you. Having said that, you can get dual housed balanced armatures off the shelf - and it would explain why a lot of custom IEM manufacturers stop at a 6 driver IEM. (Dual top, dual mid, dual low with 3 bores at the output).

With regards to size, there is a difference in physical size with driver count but this is not as significant as you may think. My 12 driver Roxannes were quite big (but not so you would notice them particularly) - and that was down to the screw on cable fixing more than anything. My 12 driver 64 audios are actually pretty tiny in comparison - that are about 1mm thicker than my other half’s triple driver 64s that she uses for the gym. The biggest influence on an IEM driver size is actually your ear. If your concha (check out pic on google images if not sure) is small, then obviously, there is less space to cram in drivers, therefore the IEM will have to be built out more to fit in the drivers. In reality, it’s a non issue - most ears will accommodate high driver IEMs without you looking like Shrek. Even the 18 driver from 64 is physically pretty small - they certainly know how to cram them in.

 

Re: who does the impressions, this is sadly what I suspected to be the case. Custom IEM seem to have two London branches though which is great. I may try and arrange a demo session (perhaps getting impressions done while I’m there) as I’m back home for a couple of days this week. Happy days!

As for driver count affecting the physical size of the IEM, this is good news. To be fair, I have fairly large ears so I doubt it would be as much of a problem for me as it may be for others anyway. Though I’m guessing that my ear being large in a general sense doesn’t necessarily mean my concha will be large!

18 drivers?! Dare I ask the use case for such a powerhouse of an IEM?

Edited January 6, 2019 by CameronJ

[Graham]

1 hour ago, EBS_freak said:

Don’t hide the problem with a compressor - sort out your technique! 😛 It’s true though, IEMs will reveal lots about your (and your band mates) performances! Don’t worry though, out front nobody will notice what you notice!

OK the tone being thinner is going to be thinner because you haven’t got the colouration of your bass cab/monitor adding weight to the tone. I’ve mentioned earlier in the thread about running a separate mixer for monitor use but if you have enough free channels on your mixing desk, you can split your input and have one bass channel for FOH and one bass channel specifically for your ears. This way you can EQ in a lot more low end and start adding compression independently of what is happening FOH. I set this up with stingraypete not too long ago on his xr16 and I believe @intime-nick does the same on his xr18? It’s not difficult to do once you have you head around routing on your desk.

As for bleed - make sure your IEMs are up loud enough to get over the ambient bleed. It may only be a couple of dB to make all the difference. The guitar amp - if you can, always mic it into the desk even if it doesn’t go foh - it enables you to take a direct feed into your IEMs on your aux, you just leave the slider down for foh. The less bleed you get from the wedges, the better.

im guessing you were using the onboard WiFi on your mixer? Get an external router - the onboard ones are rubbish. Your lag and drop out issues will then vanish.

Stick with it - I hope your first venture out showed you the benefits!

Oh yeah, I'm definitely sticking with it, I'm the only one in the band so far who'd purely on DI/IEM at the moment, but I'm gently nudging the others in that direction, when we're in anything bigger than a pub corner we normally have the guitar cab miced, but I'm showing the guitarist things like the Joyo cab box to pair with his Marshall rack pre as silent solution.

Fortunately, we hit our sales target at work for 2018 so it's bonus season! I've been looking at the UE options, looks like (negotiations with the wife pending) that UE11s are in budget - worth spending the extra over the UE6s?

[Graham]

25 minutes ago, CameronJ said:

To be fair, I have fairly large ears so I doubt it would be as much of a problem for me as it may be for others anyway.

You are Will Smith and I claim my five pounds 😂

[EBS_freak]

2 hours ago, CameronJ said:

Re: who does the impressions, this is sadly what I suspected to be the case. Custom IEM seem to have two London branches though which is great. I may try and arrange a demo session (perhaps getting impressions done while I’m there) as I’m back home for a couple of days this week. Happy days!

18 drivers?! Dare I ask the use case for such a powerhouse of an IEM?

Don’t get me wrong - there are plenty of people out there who can take good impressions, just be prepared to ask them some questions and if they aren’t following the above, start asking them more questions. If they start take an impression without a bite block, don’t have you sitting still and in silence - and ensure deep and full coverage with the impression, then there’s something wrong. Most IEM manufacturers can supply a note for audiologists to follow so they get an appropriate resulting impression.

18 drivers - well it’s 64 audios reference piece, so designed to have outrageous amounts of headroom, linear response and near perfect crossovers between all the different drivers to achieve that. It’s very highly regarded by mix engineers and audiophiles alike but I suspect it was about getting one over JH Audio when JH started the trend of upping driver counts quite significantly. Cue the fight between JH and 64, the lawsuit over apparent patent infringement, the “Big Bertha” April fools video from JH blah blah yaddah yaddah....

 

Edited January 6, 2019 by EBS_freak

[EBS_freak]

For anybody interested in the April Fools Big Bertha - 

 

I don’t think 64 drivers per side was a coincidence! 

[EBS_freak]

1 hour ago, Graham said:

 I've been looking at the UE options, looks like (negotiations with the wife pending) that UE11s are in budget - worth spending the extra over the UE6s?

You have to listen and see what your ears tell you!

[CameronJ]

44 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

For anybody interested in the April Fools Big Bertha - 

 

I don’t think 64 drivers per side was a coincidence! 

That is hilarious!

[stingrayPete1977]

I threw the drummer a mix together at last night's gig, had a regular wedge on standby but we didn't need it, he's a convert, loved it!