IEMs again but this time wireless vs wired and more...

andyg_prs

For a rock / metal covers band I've always struggled with hearing myself....I'll cut that part short...I'm OCD, too little / too much of me ruins my ability to relax, enjoy and play well.

A bass player from another band kindly lent me his Shure PSM200 rig, Shure SE215s and Shure 425s.  I've experimented in my home studio with my guitar going through my amp and CaptorX into the mixer/PA.  My monitor speakers provided ear splitting Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction and - Gun Word Up as examples of songs we play.

My intial thoughts are that I will just send my guitar only from the CaptorX to provide me the level that I need to hear myself, and the ambient sound of the band being sufficient for hearing everyone else.  Logic....if I can normally hear the band but not myself, lowering them a bit (effectively ear plugs) and increasing myself a bit should work right?  It has in the studio with recorded music at least.

The CaptorX lets you use a separate EQ for the right hand XLR out and I was stunned that I could get a sound I didn't mind - preferred the single driver SE215s....go figure....maybe the single driver robs some of the high end frequencies that I normally hate?  I also used the CaptorX eq to reduce the 6k and 2k bands a little.

Now, when I started looking for wireless set ups, the PSM200 is discontinued...I also saw the T.Bone stuff starting at £133 from Thomann.  I was wondering about how much the transmitter/receiver have to do with the quality of what you hear?  More specifically the brittleness that IEM set ups tend to suffer from - for me.

I also wondered whether the T.Bone stuff is designed to let you mix two different feeds?  So imagine I progressed to asking the soundman to give me an XLR with a general band mix, on stage, I plug into the transmitter...and then the CaptorX gives me just my guitar feed as before....I set the mix and off I go.   (Although in that scenario, if the soundman messes with the mix, it would bugger things up a bit). The T.Bone stuff seemed like although there were left and right inputs, that the levels were there for the input sensitivity and were supposed to be for a single audio source.

The other thing is whether I go for some kind of wired setup - mainly to save money.  This covers band doesn't play big enough venues to run around the stage.  To that end, I dug out a Behringer MA400 ultra compact headphone monitor and tried that.  It worked....but it definitely gave a harsher sound than the Shure.  You might say you'd expect that as the Behringer is cheap kit.  Then again, I'd wondered if just going direct might automatically deliver better quality.

*EDIT - I have played in bands where I use my G30 for wireless guitar*

So as some kind of conclusion. 

1.  I think SE215s will do my fine and they are only just over £100.
2.  I need some kind of solution to connecting them up to my rig, and it probably makes sense to future proof with a solution that will accept two distinct audio sources....but I'm open to being swayed on that.
3.  I'm not sure between wired and wireless.
4.  If I did go wireless....what's the nearest to the PSM200 set up without spending a mint....or do I look for a PSM200 secondhand?

I'm hoping you guys can help me with your experience and knowledge

Thanks,
Andy

Gassage

.

Musicwolf

If you don't need wireless then don't even consider wireless.  Wired gives best quality, highest reliability all at the lowest cost.  If you don't like the Behringer headphone amp then maybe one of these?  Built in limiter to protect your hearing.

Danny1969

If you want  a nice IEM feed then you need to run stereo. Using a mono source for IEM's is like listening to your iPod in mono .. it just sounds flat and one dimensional. The human brain is used to sounds coming from different sources so you will find you will hear things better in stereo without them being excessively loud. 

So you need 2 aux sends from the desk and then you can pan things so everything is seperated. 

Then you need some means of getting that stereo signal to your ears and the best way is wired. You can send a stereo IEM signal up the same cable as a guitar signal is coming down. I  designed my first cable like this in 2008 but other people now also make and sell such cables. 

if you have a pedalboard then a small micro mixer can not only act as a headphone amp but can also except more than one signal so you could have a stereo feed from the PA into the micro mixer plus a feed from your guitar and another source such as a vocal mic or ambient mic. Very handy for festival gigs where you want certain things like your guitar and vocal monitoring under your control regardless of what the soundman sends you. 

Shure 215's are fine. They might seem a tad dull top end lack punch compared to other multi driver systems but they don't get fatiguing over long gigs. I've done many a 3 X 1 hour sets with them. 

I've been on IEM's since 2008 and have tried a lot of things over the years. I now have the kind of quality monitoring you would expect when tracking in the studio, it's very good indeed but it does take a bit of thought to get right. 

andyg_prs

@Danny1969 bear with me as I try to wrap my head around this.

Trying to keep the setup as simple as possible.....assuming I'm going to want to keep the general band mix low....if I had one xlr feed from FoH  (seems a reasonable request even at small gigs / support slots - they could even just unplug my monitor and use that as the feed) and put that into a tiny mixer, panned left....and then my second xlr out from my CaptorX as the other feed.....panned right.....would that convince my brain I was hearing in stereo?  My guitar would be louder.   And then, at the IEM end....would I keep that with the FoH mix in my left ear, and my guitar mix in my right?  I'm just wondering if the difference in volumes might be odd....

Even if I did get a stereo mix from FoH, I'd still have a mono feed for my guitar....although if I didn't pan that either way, I'd still have the guitar as the overriding element, and it's still be mono in both ears at the same time?

And if I did go that way....what's the smallest mixer that would do the job?  I say that as my setup (Engl Ironball, CaptorX, pedalboard) is already a bit of a joke with the band where the other (virtuostic) guitarist just turns up with an AX8 or a couple of pedals....and seems to be fine regardless of the mix!

PS - still thinking this through....and considering the feed from FoH, wouldn't you expect the left and right channels of an equal mix to be identical.....so why would that sound different to a mono signal fed into both ears?

As you can see....I'm quite new to the theory of this stuff...

mike257

I echo what Danny has said. 

I'm a monitor engineer, and honestly having a decent stereo IEM mix with just a little bit of planning of sources to create some space and separation is night and day from a straight mono feed. Having a mono band mix in one ear and a mono guitar mix in the other isn't the same thing. 

Without knowing more about the sort of gigs you do, and what sort of sound setup you're usually faced with, it's hard for me to say how easy it'll be to get that on regular basis. 

On the wired vs wireless point - a cable is going to be sonically better than wireless, and certainly head and shoulders above cheap wireless. The likes of the T Bone kit are going to have lesser audio quality and lesser wireless performance. The PSM300 or Sennheiser G3 would be my usual base level minimum spec I'd recommend buying. 

andyg_prs

@mike257 again, I appreciate the info, but haven't done this before.  Assuming I could get a stereo mix from FoH, my focus is really the quality of my guitar, which I will hear louder by virtue of my mono feed from the CaptorX - it can only be a mono feed (for the small scale gigs I'm talking about) as the other feed is going to FoH.

So isn't my mono guitar feed going to sound the same regardless of what mix I get from FoH?

maltingsaudio

Cable is always if you can the best way to go. With regards to the actual sound in your ears doesn’t matter if you use buds or moulds, you need to be able to separately EQ the signal to your ears to make them sound acceptable, so some sort of EQ on your monitor send is vital. Nb this is at odds with the sound your making as a tiny one inch speaker is trying to reproduce the sound of a 4x12 for example, so don’t adjust your guitar amp to make your in ears sound right!