Maybe a stupid question about IEMs

[Sarah5string]

... if you have an IEM, does that mean you no longer get sound out of your amp?

I'm trying to get my head around if there's a way for me to have my bass/vocals in an IEM but still have the  amp sound for smaller pubs gigs etc where there's not a PA.

Am I being dumb?

[Acebassmusic]

10 minutes ago, Sarah5string said:

Am I being dumb?

Nope....that's my job and I have the qualifications to prove it! 🙂

In answer to your question, yes you can have both (or either). Usually you would plug your bass into your amp/Helix etc. and a DI is then sent to the PA. In the PA mixer an IEM mix (of your choice) is created and then sent back to your in-ears via cable or wireless. For this you don't need a cab, but if you wanted one for onstage sound, you just plug a cab into your amp/Helix and away you go.

Hope that helps 🙂

[jrixn1]

18 minutes ago, Sarah5string said:

where there's not a PA.

How does anyone hear the vocals if there's no PA?

[Sarah5string]

1 minute ago, Acebassmusic said:

Nope....that's my job and I have the qualifications to prove it! 🙂

In answer to your question, yes you can have both (or either). Usually you would plug your bass into your amp/Helix etc. and a DI is then sent to the PA. In the PA mixer an IEM mix (of your choice) is created and then sent back to your in-ears via cable or wireless. For this you don't need a cab, but if you wanted one for onstage sound, you just plug a cab into your amp/Helix and away you go.

Hope that helps 🙂

I think I get you, so it would be connected between the amp and PA, not the bass and the amp?

[Sarah5string]

Just now, jrixn1 said:

How does anyone hear the vocals if there's no PA?

fair point actually 🤣

Told you it was a dumb question

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Sarah5string said:

I think I get you, so it would be connected between the amp and PA, not the bass and the amp?

The IEMs will be fed from whatever signal goes to the PA. Where that point is will depend on you and/or the PA engineer.

Remember that your cab(s) colour the sound just as much as the amp so any PA feed that does not take your whole rig into account will not be any accurate representation of your bass sound.

The musicians who benefit the most from IEMs are those who have completely ditched conventional amp and cab systems. They can provide a PA and IEM feed that completely captures all the signal processing that is part of their sound.

Edited May 28, 2021 by BigRedX

[Sarah5string]

Yea that makes sense. I think my main thought with getting them is being able to hear my vocals and bass clear enough to know if something is off when playing live!

[BigRedX]

Just now, Sarah5string said:

Yea that makes sense. I think my main thought with getting them is being able to hear my vocals and bass clear enough to know if something is off when playing live!

How useful they are to you will depend on how accurate you need what you hear to be in terms to sound.

Some musicians are incredibly precious about their on-stage sound and seemingly can't play properly unless it is as close to their perfect sound as possible. Others like myself just need to be able hear enough to be able to tell that they are in time and in tune with the other musicians and be able to tell where they are in the song. 

[Sarah5string]

51 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

How useful they are to you will depend on how accurate you need what you hear to be in terms to sound.

Some musicians are incredibly precious about their on-stage sound and seemingly can't play properly unless it is as close to their perfect sound as possible. Others like myself just need to be able hear enough to be able to tell that they are in time and in tune with the other musicians and be able to tell where they are in the song. 

I think it's more about my own self confidence than anything else to be fair!

[Phil Starr]

On 28/05/2021 at 13:15, Sarah5string said:

Yea that makes sense. I think my main thought with getting them is being able to hear my vocals and bass clear enough to know if something is off when playing live!

You'll get so much more than that. Good in ears will block out most of the ambient sound on stage and protect your hearing. Most of us play with a drummer and the sound levels average around 100db or higher where we stand. 2 hours of that is enough to cause hearing loss and that will be cumulative. It's almost impossible to get good monitoring on stage. fundamentally all the musicians will be after 'more me' but as you share the same space that means you are all competing for volume. In ears mean you can turn up (or down) anything you want and not affect anyone else.

You can take a signal from your bass at any stage, straight from the bass, after all the tone controls, at the amp output to the speakers or by miking the speakers themselves. Most amps have a DI (direct injection) output which is switchable pre or post eq. If you don't have that then you can use a DI box to split the signal and give you a feed to your mixing desk or your in ears.

The best way of running in-ears is via the auxiliary outputs from your mixing desk. You can then mix the balance you want there and send that to your 'phones. That assumes your desk is sophisticated enough to allow each person who wants it a separate aux channel.  If not you'll have to split the signals from your personal mic and bass before sending them to the desk and have a personal mixer for your in ears. You'll also want a feed of the band so you know what they are doing too but there are usually plenty of ways of feeding a front of house mix to you from the mixer.

There's a long thread on IEM's I'll add a link. It's a bit techie in places but it's a good place to ask questions and you'll get practical advice.

 

[Phil Starr]

Here you go The IEM Bible thread - Accessories and Misc - Basschat

 

[bloke_zero]

There is a lot to be said for IEM but you've identified the weakpoint - you need a mix engineer of some kind, even if that is you or someone else in the band, who can set up the mix properly, and ideally be able to adjust the levels for you during the gig. We've all had a monitor mix that needed adjusting during gigs, probably every gig, especially when the guitarist suddenly turns themselves up!

[LeftyJ]

1 hour ago, bloke_zero said:

There is a lot to be said for IEM but you've identified the weakpoint - you need a mix engineer of some kind, even if that is you or someone else in the band, who can set up the mix properly, and ideally be able to adjust the levels for you during the gig. We've all had a monitor mix that needed adjusting during gigs, probably every gig, especially when the guitarist suddenly turns themselves up!

This! We had a workaround for this with my band, where we built a small 3HE rack unit that would mount on the bottom half of a drum seat, with a laptop on top running a DAW with a clicktrack and a backing track with all the keys to our songs (we recorded synths and a Hammond on our album, but didn't gig with a live keyboardist). In the rack were a 19" signal splitter, 4 wireless in-ear transmitters (and one wired headphone for our drummer) and a very basic 19" 8-channel USB mixer which controlled the master output levels to each of our IEM transmitters. We plugged all our outputs into that system, and from the splitterbox we ran our signals to the FOH engineer. Our drummer controlled the backing tracks. This setup unfortunately meant there was no easy way for us to adjust our individual mixes during the gig (this had to be done in a software mixer on the laptop).

Depending on the size of the stage our system allowed for two scenario's for the use of the system:

1. All of us used the monitoring system, were able to hear the clicktrack and our pre-set monitoring mix. All tracks started with a countdown, so no need for our drummer to signal;
2. Only our drummer used the system, and the rest of us used our amps or the venue's own monitors. Our drummer would set the tempo with 4 taps before each song, and would softly keep tapping during sections with no drums.

This worked very well for us, and has served us well for several years