IEM for beginners

[martthebass]

Firstly, apologies in advance if this has been done elsewhere.

Ive always been in bands with back line, however with a degree of hearing loss I’m now finding that the volumes on stage quite often lead to pitch shift in my perception and higher volumes make this worse.

So, as the band isn’t in a frame of mind to go totally back line less could someone give me guidance on what I need equipment wise and connections wise to set up an IEM for myself.

The band is currently using a Dynacord Powermate 600 as the main PA with tops and active sub. The only things going through the PA are vocals (4) and Roland electronic kit. 
I’m not made of money so a starter set up that would give me a way of not overloading my stressed earlugs would be great. At the moment it would be just me going IEM.

[Frank Blank]

The definitive guide...

 

 

[Chienmortbb]

18 hours ago, martthebass said:

Firstly, apologies in advance if this has been done elsewhere.

Ive always been in bands with back line, however with a degree of hearing loss I’m now finding that the volumes on stage quite often lead to pitch shift in my perception and higher volumes make this worse.

So, as the band isn’t in a frame of mind to go totally back line less could someone give me guidance on what I need equipment wise and connections wise to set up an IEM for myself.

The band is currently using a Dynacord Powermate 600 as the main PA with tops and active sub. The only things going through the PA are vocals (4) and Roland electronic kit. 
I’m not made of money so a starter set up that would give me a way of not overloading my stressed earlugs would be great. At the moment it would be just me going IEM.

The first thing you need to check is the number of Aux or Bus outputs available on the Dynacord. Looking at the manual for the 600-3, it looks like you have just MON and AUX.  So you cannot have more than two monitor mixes. The Dynacord looks to be a great Powered mixer but it is limited in this respect. If it is just you going IEM, then try a wired system initially fed from the Aux output. I use KZ ZS10 earpieces, plus the Behringer P2. Total cost about £90. Be warned that the KZ ZS10 have a scooped response and without a separate EQ on the AUX output, will be bass heavy  and have a suck out in the mid region. However they do outperform( in my opinion) many dedicated IEM earphones fro the usual subjects. 
 

@EBS_freak and @Phil Starrhave much more experience than me however and will hopefully put me right, where needed. 

[martthebass]

34 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

The first thing you need to check is the number of Aux or Bus outputs available on the Dynacord. Looking at the manual for the 600-3, it looks like you have just MON and AUX.  So you cannot have more than two monitor mixes. The Dynacord looks to be a great Powered mixer but it is limited in this respect. If it is just you going IEM, then try a wired system initially fed from the Aux output. I use KZ ZS10 earpieces, plus the Behringer P2. Total cost about £90. Be warned that the KZ ZS10 have a scooped response and without a separate EQ on the AUX output, will be bass heavy  and have a suck out in the mid region. However they do outperform( in my opinion) many dedicated IEM earphones fro the usual subjects. 
 

@EBS_freak and @Phil Starrhave much more experience than me however and will hopefully put me right, where needed. 

Thanks for this mate!

[Phil Starr]

And @EBS_freak knows a lot more about this than I do. I used his advice in that long thread a lot on my journey to in-ears. All I can do is summarise my journey and what I found helpful and give you some practical tips.

 

I too have some hearing loss and tinnitus as well. My journey started partly because of that and was partly stimulated by my experiences in the studio. Everything about my playing in the studio was better to the extent that I believed someone had dubbed over my bass with theirs. All that had happened was that playing through headphones had cut out extraneous noise and given me my best mix so that I could hear myself clearly and play with precision, my ears and brain just took over and the sounds in my head were what my fingers were actually doing. I could also hear everyone else much more clearly. I'd strongly recommend you start at rehearsals with some tight fitting over-ears. You can get the mix right for you and know that is the sound you are going to feed your in-ears is spot on. Start off with that studio sound.

 

Tip 1.  make sure you get good isolation. People who give up on in-ears are going to do so because they don't do this. You have to block out as much as you can of the drums and over-loud guitar or whatever. If you don't you'll have to turn the in ears up loud enough to drown out an already too loud sound. The stage sound will also be out of phase (I can explain that if you ask) with the in ears and make everything even more distorted. Isolation is about fit: the better the fit to your ears the less sound will come in from outside. In order of seal best is moulded in-ears> moulded ear buds>self selected ear buds>the buds that come with the in-ears. You can get as much as 26db of isolation with moulded in-ears, 18db is the most you can get if you seek out the best fitting universal plugs and the provided ones will probably give you 6-12db isolation. 6db means a 75% cut in the power reaching your eardrums.

 

Tip 2.  Finding the right ear buds. I have boxes of plugs in all the shapes and sizes, they are dirt cheap and you can buy boxes of mixed sizes on Amazon and eBay. Everyones ears are different and most people's ears are different from each other. You know when you get the best fit because you'll hear the bass better. If there is any leakage the bass is lost, it depends upon a good seal. If you get better bass when you gently push in the headphones then they haven't sealed. Obviously if they drop out they haven't sealed and if the world hasn't gone quiet you haven't found your fit. I've ended up with triple flanged buds that push right into my ear canal but everyone has different ears so you'll need to go on looking.

 

So the next thing to consider are the headphones, I've used some cheap domestic Sennheisers with success but you are limited in the volume you can get and live music is uncompressed usually so the difference between the average volume and quiet bits is much greater than recored music and domestic in ears are going to distort, OK to test the concept but you'll need an upgrade sooner or later. Fortunately there are reasonably priced options. The Linsoul ZS10 Pro X are probably the way to go as they are bargain of the century, they have five drivers a side and will handle everything you throw at them and are priced around £45 if you shop around. Moderately bulky but a good fit for most people. Shure's SE215's (around £100) are used by a lot of singers but can struggle with bass and drums, Sennheiser IE100's are similar, both are single driver phomes which limits bass handling but both handle mids well. Shures are famous for fitting well but everyone's ears are different so no guarantees. I have IE100's and I prefer the midrange to the ZS10's but use the ZS10's more often. If you are determined to make this work and money is no object then go for moulded in ears from the start. Otherwise I'd go for the ZS10's.

 

The other thing you'll need is a headphone amp, something to put on the floor in front of you or to have on your belt to power the phones and give you a volume control you can reach. Most of us are using the Behringer P2. Reasonably robust in a metal case, runs on AAA batteries and has a bit of rudimentary ear protection £50. Or you can go wireless which is another can of worms.

 

Now you have to get the signal from the band to your headphones. You have a problem here as your Dynacord only has one Aux so you are stuck with the front of house mix or the monitor mix. You can get round this in a few ways but nothing beats a mixer with at least one aux per person preferably with tone controls on each output. Since none of your band are interested yet you are probably stuck with a workaround. If you can cope with the front of house mix then you can take this from the Headphone out or from the Aux out which will give you the ability to have a special monitor mix if no-one else is using the aux channel.

 

I'll come back and deal with work rounds for limited mixers

 

 

Edited March 9 by Phil Starr

[EBS_freak]

For an idea of what a good seal sounds like... put your fingers as deep as you can into your ears to block out as much sound as you can. If the seal on your inears don't sound comparable (or better), the fit isn't good.

[Chienmortbb]

3 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

For an idea of what a good seal sounds like... put your fingers as deep as you can into your ears to block out as much sound as you can. If the seal on your inears don't sound comparable (or better), the fit isn't good.

I once went to the Dr it’s a sore ear. She asked if I used cotton buds, “no” I said “Put nothing in your ear smaller than your elbow.” The Dr asked who gave me that advice? “You”  I said, “ about 15 years ago!”

[EBS_freak]

2 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

I once went to the Dr it’s a sore ear. She asked if I used cotton buds, “no” I said “Put nothing in your ear smaller than your elbow.” The Dr asked who gave me that advice? “You”  I said, “ about 15 years ago!”

Well, it's no wonder that your IEMs aren't fitting. The tips are far too big.

[Chienmortbb]

1 hour ago, EBS_freak said:

Well, it's no wonder that your IEMs aren't fitting. The tips are far too big.

Have you met my friend Noddy?

[Phil Starr]

Hi @martthebass

 

so I don't know if you are working on this yet? If you have some headphones then you need to try out some things at rehearsal, though you can work on getting the best seal possible at home by swapping out the ear tips until you get the best fit which should cut out as much outside sound as possible and not keep falling out. If you have some good closed back over ear headphones though it is quite useful to start with those. It doesn't matter about how you look at rehearsal and it will protect your ears and is much more comfortable to work with initially. And you can pull them off easily when you need to talk with the rest of the band.

 

I don't think we've talked about what monitors you are currently using but you can just use the aux channel to drive your headphones if it isn't already being used. If not the headphone channel or the monitor out willl do.

 

If however the monitoring is good but just too loud then there is an altermative and that is to use 'ambient' monitoring. Use an extra mic to pick up the band's sound feed that to a headphone amp and into your in-ears, the bonus of this method is you get to hear the audience noise and everything your band members say. A hack that works is to use a mini recorder to do this, it has the mic and headphone amp built into a single case. I've tried this with a Zoom H4N mounted on my mic stand and a little Olympus dictaphone type thing strung round my neck on a cord. Both worked brilliantly. You could probably use your 'phone if it has a jack socket.

 

I found all of these work better than anything but the very best floor monitors and I could hear better than I could at 90% of the gigs I played. The ultimate though is to have your own mix

[Acebassmusic]

On 30/01/2024 at 10:21, EBS_freak said:

For an idea of what a good seal sounds like... put your fingers as deep as you can into your ears to block out as much sound as you can. If the seal on your inears don't sound comparable (or better), the fit isn't good.

Along with @Phil Starr and @EBS_freak's great comments I have used the following website to check the seal on my in-ears and found it a starter to getting a good seal. Basically use the tone audio files, follow the instructions and change out the tips as require to achieve the even tone. 👍

Audio Seal Test