I have a love/hate relationship with in ear monitors. I use them for 50% of my playing, so I have a pretty good reference point. Let me begin by saying they are my preferred method for monitors. I have played in all sorts of venues with everything from no monitors to a separate monitor mix for each musician with amps, wedges and IEM all at the same time. I have found that the larger the venue and FOH system, the greater the need for IEM. In a small coffeehouse, you do just fine with a small amp, no monitors and a small FOH system, as long as the guitarists keep the volume down. Just so you know what I am basing my opinion on, here is my point of reference. I play in a band- CFW, we practice every week. I play bass through an amp and we use wedges for the vocal monitors. There are times, not often, that I need to have everyone turn down or I need to use earplugs because it is just to loud. When we do a gig, we use wedges and amps. When I play at church every week, we use Avioms and no amps. The vocals that are not playing any instruments still have wedges, but all the instruments are direct to the board and we use electronic drums.
Which do I like better? It’s a tie right now. Here is why.
The Avioms are very nice, I can control my mix and here what I want. The problem is that there is no energy in what I hear. Since I play bass, I am used to feeling the notes as well as hearing them and this is missing. The energy created and transmitted by hitting the crash cymbal is not there. I know that you can add butt kickers and that would help, but the church is slow to adopt this concept. This is the one major flaw in this IEM setup. If we had a massive array of subwoofers that shook the stage, I’d be happy, but the congregation would not.
Playing with the band, I have an amp and I can feel as well as here. The downside is I have no control over the stage volume and what I hear. I can move around and adjust what I hear a little, but by the end of the night it is too loud and too much.
So what are the answers?
- Add buttkickers to the church set up and get the best in ear monitors I can afford. At this point, I have a set of Shure e-5′s but not the custom inserts. This is OK, but I had a set of Shure e-1 with custom inserts that did a better job of isolation/comfort/bass response. I am not going to get the inserts for the e-5 because they are already discontinued. My next IEM purchase will be sensophonics or ultimate ears or future sonics. All make pro quality custom insert monitors that will last for years.
-We currently split the FOH feed for the band to a monitor board. I could tap into that with my own board and set up an IEM feed for myself. THe major stumbling block is the addition set up and tear down. If I can figure out at plug and play set up where I have to just plug into the monitor set up that would work.
