DIY full wireless in-ear mix setup at venues?

[JonWormwood]

Mics > Two 8 channel splitters > band Mixer > in-ear transmitter
................................................> FOH



We want to try this sometime in 2012. I'm afraid of ground loops as we already have some when we patch our drum trigger DI into the FOH snake that a simple ground switch never fixes.

 

[Sloan]

Are you saying you'll send your ears mix to FOH?
OR your splitting the mix so you guys get some for ears and FOH gets some as well?
Is the goal to have easier/faster hookup for your ear mix?

How many separate ear mixes do you guys need?


I've been wanting to go all in-ear for a long ass time, i just gotta get each band member to save up like $600 for their own ears and shit. Then setup something for all the mixes, seems like a large investment, but when you weigh in that you don't have to lug around monitors or an amp for the monitors, AND ALMOST NO FEEDBACK - then it's a fucking great deal.

 

[Sloan]

I would think it would be ideal to keep a long TRS snake connected to your in-ear transmitters and coiled up in the rack, then you just give an end to FOH dude to hook into his aux/monitor sends.

 

[arv_foh]

Well unless you're the headliner there really is no way to do this to make it convenient and ideal.

You need a monitor engineer or someone that is familiar with running the board to set it up and make adjustments during the set, because the band will be setting up their gear/playing the show.

To make this as easy as possible during a changeover, You'd need all your own mics (drums, guitars, vocals) and XLR lines to plug into the split, then FOH would get one end of the split and the MONS desk would get the other. Then you would have complete independent control of your in ear mixes.

This would be a huge pain to set up in a typical 15 minute changeover, especially if something got messed up and didn't work properly.

 

[Sloan]

I agree. My idea was for small clubs where FOH also does your monitors, but you would still have to change over equipment, hook up your ears snake and then check everyone's ears.

 

[JonWormwood]

Are you saying you'll send your ears mix to FOH?
OR your splitting the mix so you guys get some for ears and FOH gets some as well?
Is the goal to have easier/faster hookup for your ear mix?

How many separate ear mixes do you guys need?


I've been wanting to go all in-ear for a long ass time, i just gotta get each band member to save up like $600 for their own ears and shit. Then setup something for all the mixes, seems like a large investment, but when you weigh in that you don't have to lug around monitors or an amp for the monitors, AND ALMOST NO FEEDBACK - then it's a fucking great deal.

Just one mix, we already practice with a wired setup monitoring thru reaper or a mixing board. Obviously we would use the physical mixer live.

Well unless you're the headliner there really is no way to do this to make it convenient and ideal.

You need a monitor engineer or someone that is familiar with running the board to set it up and make adjustments during the set, because the band will be setting up their gear/playing the show.

To make this as easy as possible during a changeover, You'd need all your own mics (drums, guitars, vocals) and XLR lines to plug into the split, then FOH would get one end of the split and the MONS desk would get the other. Then you would have complete independent control of your in ear mixes.

This would be a huge pain to set up in a typical 15 minute changeover, especially if something got messed up and didn't work properly.

Once the levels were set on our board, it'd be set and forget.

Drums are triggered/mic'd already (for drummers monitoring purposes) We already have a monitor sends on the drum mixer we get in our in ears now (along with a click) But obviously no gtrs/keys/vox/bass

I'm confident in knowing it could get setup correctly within a timely manner night after night but I'm just being ambitious knowing at this point it's just more money and gear to sink into it.

 

[JonWormwood]

I would think it would be ideal to keep a long TRS snake connected to your in-ear transmitters and coiled up in the rack, then you just give an end to FOH dude to hook into his aux/monitor sends.

And ideally, yes. I'd want the snake idea as well with all the labels ready to go. It'd be more then ideal.

 

[Sloan]

I guess you could have your pre-setup drums mix in your mixer and just take a single mix of everything else off an FOH aux send, and he would mix it like he normally would do a monitor mix. You would just have one cable running from a return on his stage snake to your mixer.

 

[DanLights]

for vocals it´s difficult cause you would need a splitter, but for guitars and bass I´ve done it, only for the drummer cause we don´t have wireless IEMs but one day we will. Our drummer has a small mixer where he plugs his metronome, my Iphone is also connected for the songs which have a backing track (and he uses the click from my Iphone for those songs), I send the DI out from my bass amp into his mixer, one guitarist has a line 6 spider valve which also has an XLR send, the other guitarist uses a POD XT live so we send the second output to the drummer, and voila. Of course this depends on what you use, in our case we mic up the cabs for the FOH (if needed, small pubs generally don´t, in our last one we were even restricted on volume and weren´t micing anything except Vocals) so the extra outputs go to the drummer, if you don´t have that just split everything as closest to the source as possible as so not to bother too much the FOH guys when changeover time comes.

In my case, normally we play small pubs and clubs where we take most of the PA gear ourselves and are our own soundguys, so we have the freedom

 

[-Noodles-]

It's a great idea to go with ears. Especially for smaller venues, too.

BUT:

You'll have to keep the gain staging consistent from show to show to ensure your mixes will be similar. You can't suddenly crank your amp mid-show.

You'll also need to have a splitter.
If you are really wanting to invest I can suggest and design system that's all in one and the FOH dude will get pointed to your splitter rack for his inputs.

Sounds like you're onto a winner but it can be costly to keep everyone happy. And even more to make it sound good.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

What's your budget?
If you are serious about this, the Crest X20RM is what you need: http://www.crestaudio.com/products/...tem/116969/number/03513600/cat/327/X 20RM.cfm

 

[raisedfist]

I see alot of in ears coming through at my work as I work in a theatre and I've seen a couple of different ways to set them up; One band use Y splitters from the stage box on stage and have the monitor board facing them and as its their mics and kit I guess its pretty much the same every night and this seems pretty common.
I was speaking to a engineer who distributes the new roland digital desks and they do modules you can have on stage to adjust your own mix, I guess thats the joy of cat5 cable!

 

[JonWormwood]

It's a great idea to go with ears. Especially for smaller venues, too.

BUT:

You'll have to keep the gain staging consistent from show to show to ensure your mixes will be similar. You can't suddenly crank your amp mid-show.

You'll also need to have a splitter.
If you are really wanting to invest I can suggest and design system that's all in one and the FOH dude will get pointed to your splitter rack for his inputs.

Sounds like you're onto a winner but it can be costly to keep everyone happy. And even more to make it sound good.

I see alot of in ears coming through at my work as I work in a theatre and I've seen a couple of different ways to set them up; One band use Y splitters from the stage box on stage and have the monitor board facing them and as its their mics and kit I guess its pretty much the same every night and this seems pretty common.
I was speaking to a engineer who distributes the new roland digital desks and they do modules you can have on stage to adjust your own mix, I guess thats the joy of cat5 cable!

We already practice with one IEM mix, everyone enjoys the full mix and if issues go down, we roll with the punches. And yes, we encounter the same gain staging problems during practice. We mic up cabs in other rooms and run them at different volumes every time. I don't know we don't run at the same vol but whatever. For this purpose, gtrs/bass/keys could all go direct tho.

Here is my original idea for the splitter/mixer setup.

Sorry it's vertical, I'm at work. Anyways, it'd be rack mounted. Splitters are 2 art s8 3-way for a total of 16 channels (we use them at work, seem to work Pretty well) so it has the mic feed, then the rear output goes to us and FOH plugs into the front direct isolated output. Our send goes into a rack mounted mixer then into the IEM transmitter.

Obviously we could use a snake to get the FOH to the FOH snake so we could have the rack off to the side.

Ive heard guys using a buch of y splitters that go into the band mixer then IEM. Any better options then what I'm thinking in my head?

 

[raisedfist]

I would go for a splitter multi so the sound guy can patch easy on stage as Y splitter are a bit of a cable nightmare