One iem mix for whole band?

funkyfraz

I've started in a pub rock band and our set up is small but sounds decent. The mixer we use is an Allen and heath zed60 which has adequate control and enough inputs.... But some of the members want to go in ears. I like in ears, but with only one aux on the desk, we can only have one monitor mix for everyone.  Having never tried this before, I can only see it not suiting everyone and end up in arguments! 

So just looking on thoughts from anyone  currently doing this exact thing? What's the pitfalls? is it just not worth even trying?  

I'd love to hear about people's experiences! 

Thanks
Fraser

Danny1969

It's not gonna be great mate, most people set an IEM or wedge mix so their vocal & guitar is the loudest thing and then they have a bit of everything else ... that ain't possible with one aux send .... Your all gonna end up with a load of lead vocal in your IEM mix and not a lot else I reckon 

I was an early adaptor to IEM's , purely because I wanted to hear myself better and I started to do so many gigs I was worried about my hearing. I've been through all kinds of IEM stuff, but ended up designed my own stuff which is what I use now and have done in one format or other since around 2012


I would advise a better desk with more sends, it's a fair bit of money buy £600 will get you a digital solution with enough sends plus the ability to control your IEM mix from your phone

The other way someone can end with more personal control despite a limited mixing desk is this. I invented this for myself after doing some festivals last summer with some very tired FOH engineers who were't exactly interested in the FOH sound let alone the IEM mix's. Most people want to hear their own vocal and guitar with clarity and full control plus a bit of everything else. This is  such an obvious and simple idea I can't believe you can't buy it off the shelf



Basically with that your in control of your vocal mix and your bass - completely independent of the mixing desk. Internally there's a mic splitter transformer and mic pre amp, plus line in amps  so your IEM's get your vocal and bass regardless of anything. 
You don't need an IEM transmitter & receiver as it sends your IEM signal in stereo up the same cable that's carries your bass guitar signal ... I call it a combiner cable.  No batteries, no interference
The foot switch turns on the built in ambient mic - so between songs you can hear more if you want. 

Lastly the control marked PA mix is what would come from the desk, it's a stereo input but can take mono with an adaptor cable. I designed it so it only needs one standard mic cable to feed it stereo rather than the normal 2

The last socket on the left overrides the built in ambient mic and although I built the first couple of units with it I haven't bothered on the latest one

This is still in prototype  mode and my own one is being sent up to @smigeon after the weekends gigs to see what he thinks of it. This is the actual one I'm using at the moment 

robinbowes

I wouldn't bother with in-ears without the right gear - it will be a lot of pain.

If you can buy a mixer with more sends then it might make more sense. For example, I bought a Yamaha TF-Rack for my band. Allen & Heath make something similar - the Qu-SB.

R.

funkyfraz

That's an extremely clever and well thought out box! I can see people having the need for that!


Only half the band are dead set on in ears. The singer is happy to go old school wedge so another possibility is give the aux  to the in ear and hope the 2 folk can compromise on the mix (neither sing) and then use the fx out for a monitor mix for the rest of us. Might just do.

Although you're right, a nice new digital desk would work a treat! 

p90fool

We use a mixture of IEMs for the two singers and a couple of Behringer personal monitors on mic stands for he rest of us, plus backline. 

Our two singers have to have the same monitor mix, but there is actually a side benefit, in that they're forced to use good mic technique and to be considerate to one another.  

They alternate between lead and backing vocals throughout the set so they have to self mix by backing off the mic so they don't drown out the lead singer. This naturally also comes over through the main PA, which is one less headache when I'm mixing from the stage. 

If they had their own personal mixes they would just keep blasting away all the time, without anyone else glaring at them because they were being drowned out. 

ESBlonde

A dirty work around for one mix IEM is to leave one ear out to get the local sound (your own?). It''s far from ideal and defeats some of the benefits but can work a little better for some people.

smigeon

Danny1969 said:

<deletions for brevity>

This is still in prototype  mode and my own one is being sent up to @smigeon after the weekends gigs to see what he thinks of it. 

I’m really looking forward to trying out @Danny1969 ‘s device! It sounds really promising for my situation as a singer/guitarist in a band in which I can never hear one or the other or both properly, and where the other guys aren’t that fussed about monitoring on on buying better PA gear. 

If Danny is agreeable, I’ll do a little review when I’ve used it.

kennedydream1980

ESBlonde said:

A dirty work around for one mix IEM is to leave one ear out to get the local sound (your own?). It''s far from ideal and defeats some of the benefits but can work a little better for some people.

We did this for years in my band and it worked fine. We had an analogue desk so limited aux sends and only one Wireless IEM system. We all had receivers for the one transmitter so we all had the same vocal mix in the IEM's. Me and the other guitarist used to run one ear out and one ear in on our earphones so we could hear the rest of the band. I always kept the earphone in which was on the drummers side. It worked okay as a compromise for what we were doing.

We upgraded to a digital desk and never looked back. We have 6 aux sends now, so we all have our own mix. I run an Amplifire 12 direct to the board in stereo and I now have the luxury of monitoring in stereo via 2 aux sends. It's a completely different world. I can now position different instruments in the stereo field (ie I can pan the Toms on the kit, Pan the bass slightly over to one side), makes it much more realistic and nicer to listen to and easier to hear everything.

BigMonka

ESBlonde said:

A dirty work around for one mix IEM is to leave one ear out to get the local sound (your own?). It''s far from ideal and defeats some of the benefits but can work a little better for some people.

This works but please be careful as it's pretty bad for your hearing as you don't get the isolation so end up turning the IEM volume up to levels that can cause damage. A decent amount of info about that if you google it.

robinbowes

BigMonka said:

ESBlonde said:

A dirty work around for one mix IEM is to leave one ear out to get the local sound (your own?). It''s far from ideal and defeats some of the benefits but can work a little better for some people.

This works but please be careful as it's pretty bad for your hearing as you don't get the isolation so end up turning the IEM volume up to levels that can cause damage. A decent amount of info about that if you google it.

^^^ This.

R.

Jalapeno

Danny1969 said:

Colour me very interested !!!  I use one of these for vocal monitoring --> https://www.thomann.de/gb/art_mymonitor.htm?ref=search_rslt_art+mixer_180456

My onstage amp usually covers guitar monitoring, though I'm usually a bit too loud (as I'm tall and can't hear it)

I too have hearing concerns - great idea !  Even better - add a bluetooth headphone OUT

robinbowes

Jalapeno said:

Even better - add a bluetooth headphone OUT  

...or just plug in a Bluetooth adapter to the existing headphone out?

R.

kennedydream1980

Is latency on Bluetooth not too high?

Danny1969

@smigeon ;
Yeah fine mate, it's only from listening to actual giging muso's that products get improved. The first guy other than me who gig'ed one at Christmas complained of a digital switching noise which I traced to the inbuilt microphone splitter transformer picking the the radiated switching noise form the venue's christmas lights ..... not something I would have thought enough about at the design stage. Good job he tried it at Christmas. That problem is now solved

@kennedydream1980 I think you only get how good IEM's can be when you go stereo .... the human brain is much more capable of decoding information when it comes from different directions. I have the toms and keys panned in mine plus my guitar to one side and the other guitar the other side. Kick and snare and bass straight down the middle ... I pretty much set it like you would mixing a record

Jalapeno

robinbowes said:

Jalapeno said:

Even better - add a bluetooth headphone OUT  

...or just plug in a Bluetooth adapter to the existing headphone out?

R.

More to fall-out/get broken at gigs IMHO ......

kennedydream1980

@kennedydream1980 I think you only get how good IEM's can be when you go stereo .... the human brain is much more capable of decoding information when it comes from different directions. I have the toms and keys panned in mine plus my guitar to one side and the other guitar the other side. Kick and snare and bass straight down the middle ... I pretty much set it like you would mixing a record

I set mine the same way @Danny1969, makes it so much more enjoyable. I made the mistake of taking my IEM's out during the last song at my last gig. It was quite shocking how loud it was, that was with no guitar backline as I run direct, it was just live drums and a bass cab on stage.

Jalapeno

kennedydream1980 said:

@kennedydream1980 I think you only get how good IEM's can be when you go stereo .... the human brain is much more capable of decoding information when it comes from different directions. I have the toms and keys panned in mine plus my guitar to one side and the other guitar the other side. Kick and snare and bass straight down the middle ... I pretty much set it like you would mixing a record

I set mine the same way @Danny1969, makes it so much more enjoyable. I made the mistake of taking my IEM's out during the last song at my last gig. It was quite shocking how loud it was, that was with no guitar backline as I run direct, it was just live drums and a bass cab on stage.

Yep, they're noisy buggers !

maltingsaudio

Just a thought re using the zed60, it is possible to get 3 monitor mixes out of it if you use the 
monitor mix out which will be the FOH mix for one send then the aux send for no2send, and headphone out for no3 (this could be more useful than the monitor mix as you can assign individual channels on pfl) not elegant but possible

funkyfraz

maltingsaudio said:

Just a thought re using the zed60, it is possible to get 3 monitor mixes out of it if you use the 
monitor mix out which will be the FOH mix for one send then the aux send for no2send, and headphone out for no3 (this could be more useful than the monitor mix as you can assign individual channels on pfl) not elegant but possible

Yep, I thought of that too, might just run the main mix to the wedges,  and would allow for the effects to be used still on the vocals. 


Just as a matter of interest, I've been looking at digital mixers all day today and as far as I can see the ones at around 500-600 mark seem to have 4 aux channels normally! I guess we'd need to go to the next level to get 5 or more! Am I seeing that correctly, or am I missing something? 

John_P

funkyfraz said:

maltingsaudio said:

Just a thought re using the zed60, it is possible to get 3 monitor mixes out of it if you use the 
monitor mix out which will be the FOH mix for one send then the aux send for no2send, and headphone out for no3 (this could be more useful than the monitor mix as you can assign individual channels on pfl) not elegant but possible

Yep, I thought of that too, might just run the main mix to the wedges,  and would allow for the effects to be used still on the vocals. 


Just as a matter of interest, I've been looking at digital mixers all day today and as far as I can see the ones at around 500-600 mark seem to have 4 aux channels normally! I guess we'd need to go to the next level to get 5 or more! Am I seeing that correctly, or am I missing something? 

You could route the monitor/ headphone out I think to give a 5th output.    I just run four mono mixes usually but I’ll be upgrading to something bigger hopefully later in the year so I might switch too stereo iems then.   

kennedydream1980

funkyfraz said:

maltingsaudio said:

Just a thought re using the zed60, it is possible to get 3 monitor mixes out of it if you use the 
monitor mix out which will be the FOH mix for one send then the aux send for no2send, and headphone out for no3 (this could be more useful than the monitor mix as you can assign individual channels on pfl) not elegant but possible

Yep, I thought of that too, might just run the main mix to the wedges,  and would allow for the effects to be used still on the vocals. 


Just as a matter of interest, I've been looking at digital mixers all day today and as far as I can see the ones at around 500-600 mark seem to have 4 aux channels normally! I guess we'd need to go to the next level to get 5 or more! Am I seeing that correctly, or am I missing something? 

You could pick up a second hand Presonus Studiolive 16.4.2 for around £450-£500. That’s what we use in my band, it has 6 Aux sends. I seen one just the other day on one of the Facebook buy and sell groups for £450.