In-ear Monitors/Headphones

[mcgraham]

Hi all

I'm looking for some input. In a nutshell, I want to give in-ear monitoring a go. I had a long explanation as to why, yada yada, but I'll skip that and get to the point.

To start with I'm looking at universal fit earphones, specifically the Shure SE530 or the SE420 (just two to keep things simple). The seminars on IEM I've been to before say that bassists, or any instrument with a wide frequency response (e.g. piano, keys) needs at least a twin driver setup, i.e. two drivers in each earpiece. These two fit the bill.

Has anyone found that one driver (rather than the more expensive 2+) is perfectly adequate for monitoring of bass AND general mix from the PA? Has anyone used these/such headphones before?

Now, if I get them, I want to make sure I'm getting full use from them. I tried a lossless vs mp3 test (Paganini and Shorter pieces) through my nicer B&O headphones, and could (perhaps?) notice a slight difference, but certainly didn't make me dissatisfied with mp3 quality. I've NOT tried them through a decent hifi so I will need to do this, but from a headphone perspective, can anyone advise on whether there is likely to be an obvious and discernible difference between lossless and mp3 with high quality headphones such as the Shures?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Mark

[bumfrog]

i don't know that much, but if it's monitoring you want then buy specific in ear monitors, not expensive headphones. The difference being is usually that the specific in ear monitors will give you what you are looking for, plus act as almost earplugs as they are moulded to completely cover your ear if that makes sense, so you don't get as much bleed from the live sound. What you linked to are just expensive headphones, and I'm not sure would be much use in a live situation to be honest.

[mcgraham]

I have done the research and I don't believe that is correct. I was on the phone to the product manager at the specialist yesterday. Essentially the custom molding part serves for comfort, to get the drivers as close as possible to your ear drums, and to provide for noise isolation.

The headphones I linked to lack the custom molding so the fit isn't quite as ideal as custom molded ones, hence the comfort and noise isolation 'may' not be as good as custom molded ones (depends on the fit you choose and the nature of your ears), but they are very much designed to isolate noise from your ear drums. I asked him what would be difference between the Shure series with custom molded ear sleeves and a fully custom molded setup and the ONLY thing he could come up with was the distance between the driver surface and your eardrum being slightly longer due to the nature of fitting a headphone to a sleeve instead of molding a driver inside the sleeve.

In short, thanks for your input, but I don't believe I need to go completely custom, and there are reasons for that.

Mark

[~tl]

On the MP3 vs. lossless question, what encoder are you using to rip your MP3s? If you aren't already, I'd rip with the Lame encoder:

[url="http://lame.sourceforge.net/"]http://lame.sourceforge.net/[/url]

I use it on the "-V 2 --vbr-new" setting which produces variable bit rate files at approximately 192kbps. Sound great to my ears, and are certainly much smaller than lossless files and sound better than files produced with the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder (which is used in iTunes, Windows Media and most other commercial solutions).

[P-T-P]

I use IEMs. Used Shure EC3s and when they were lost, used SCL3s. Tried EC2s briefly.

For bass guitar, all the fancy gubbins in the world inside the buds won't give you a nice low end response if the phones don't seal in your ear very well. That's the big advantage of the fitted ones. As I undertand it, the Shure SCL3s and above are compatable with most personal moulded earpieces.

That having been said, I use the yellow foam tips (and have tried the black foamy ones too) they work pretty well. I did have a try with the silicon and rubber ones but found that none of the silicon ones gave a comfortable fit and were a bit hard while the rubber ones were a bit too soft. None of them worked as well in terms of comfort and sound as the yellow foam ones. However you have to change the foam ones more regularly.

For me the IEMs are more about protecting ears and hearing vocals better, but with regards to bass, the EC2s weren't great, the EC3s and SCL3s are really good. I still use an amp on stage and as the IEMs only filter that onstage sound, everything is still audible, just less loud. In fact, I'd say that the drums are bit more distinct while the guitar drops into the background a bit. I still feel the bass from my amp and hear it, though slightly muffled.

With the monitor mix added to that then I get the bottom end reinforced a little and the top end is quite sparkling, sometimes a bit too bright. I personally add a little guitar to my mix along with kick drum and a little from each of the other three vocal mics on stage as well as my own vocals. Where possible we try to add a condenser mic or two pointed out towards the room to get a bit more ambience.

My experience is that it's very weird at first and will take some time both getting used to wearing them and also getting your mix right. Unless you have loads of time to soundcheck and set up room mics, you're always going to feel just a little isolated. The plus point though of course is you can hear everything without risking damaging your ears and you can turn up the bass in your IEM mix without affecting the FOH or on-stage balance.

A minor downside (that you have to turn into a positive) is that you really can hear everything you're playing and it kinda accentuates your mistakes a little, but long term that's good 'cause it focuses your mind.

I can't speak for the benefits or otherwise of using consumer phones as opposed to dedicated IEM phones, but so long as they're sufficiently high quality and have bud tips that will seal in your ear. Go for it.

Other than that, my advice would be to make sure you have an individual mix, at least to control you bass volume in your IEMs and ideally you want to be able to EQ it seperately to the EQ on your amp/FOH mix. A simple two channel mixer should sort this for you if your PA or IEM system can't.

Hope that helps.

[mcgraham]

PTP, thanks for the input. Very informative. I've got a simple mixing desk (4 channel) that I am planning on using. It all rests on whether the powered monitor has a line level out option so that I don't have to figure out a way to split the signal to get a feed.

I'll be giving it a whirl on Sunday using just what I've got, provided all the equipment works as it should.

Mark