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IEM Help Please......


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My 7 piece dance/party band wants to move to IEM's. I know absolutely nothing about them, so I'm hoping you guys can shed some light on the subject.

Our mixer is a Mackie 1604 VLZ pro. Ideally I would like for everyone to have their own mix, but with only 2 monitor sends I don't know how we would accomplish this. We do have another similar mixer that we could use as a monitor mixer if needed.

I need to know everything. What equipment do I need, how do I hook it up, etc. We have a $2,500 budget, but we could probably go up to $3k.

Let the games begin!

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Old Fart Rocker wrote:

 

 

My 7 piece dance/party band wants to move to IEM's. I know absolutely nothing about them, so I'm hoping you guys can shed some light on the subject.

 

Our mixer is a Mackie 1604 VLZ pro. Ideally I would like for everyone to have their own mix, but with only 2 monitor sends I don't know how we would accomplish this. We do have another similar mixer that we could use as a monitor mixer if needed.

 

I need to know everything. What equipment do I need, how do I hook it up, etc. We have a $2,500 budget, but we could probably go up to $3k.

 

Let the games begin!

 

Hmm.

It looks like you have 4 aux mixes, and 4 subgroups.  I assume that you are using one of your auxes for reverb since there doesn't appear to be any built in?

Also are you using the subgroups for anything?

I think you can make 4 independent mixes using a combination of auxes and submixes .... both have outputs on your board which can be routed to an IEM system.

Are you open to a wired IEM system?  Or does it have to be wireless?

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This is right where we were two years ago.  

First of all, you can't give everyone their own mix with only 2 monitor sends.  And you're not likely to find many affordable standard mixers with 7 monitors sends.  We were using a Yamaha mixer with 4 monitor sends, but knew that wouldn't work either.   It IS possible to have some people share a mix.  The bass player and drummer perhaps.  But everyone sharing TWO mixes?  that'll be tough.

Also, we were pretty sure we'd need the ability to have the monitor mixer be on stage so everyone could run their own mix.  Since we use a sound guy from a FOH position, the idea of having him be responsible for a bunch of separate mixes didn't sound appealing.

So we started looking at dedicated monitor mixers.  The cheapest one I could find at the time was the 12 channel A&H MixWiz 12M.  That one goes for $2K.  16 channels and and 12 mono/6 stereo out. Luckily I found a used one on Ebay for $800.  I think I got it cheap because the guy advertised it as "one of the out channels might not work."   Since we didn't need that many, I figured it would be fine.  And it turns out that bad channel works perfectly.  Maybe there are cheaper monitor mixers on the market now?  I haven't looked.

And everyone is going to need their own wireless systems.  $3-400 is about the cheapest for decent ones.  And probably everyone is going to want molded ear buds.  Another $200.   And you'll need a small snake to jump from the monitor mixer to the main board.   Gonna be tough doing it for $3K.  Believe me, we tried to cut every corner we could, but not wanting to throw-good-money-after-bad, we decided to stay away from the REALLY cheap stuff. 

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Thanks for the replies. Not everyone needs their own mix. I should have been clearer about that. Ideally, it would be great to have the 3 singers have their own mix. I think the band, guit, bass, drums, kb, could share a mix. Although the drummer and kb do some singing. But, I'm pretty sure I could make 4 monitor mixes work. The drummer, bass and I (guit) are the least picky. Quite frankly I'm fine with floor monitors, but our 3 singers(1 male, 2 female) are a bunch of prima donas.

A new digital mixer is on the horizon, but shoring up our monitor situation is a priority.

With our current mixer, can I run 4 monitor mixes? IIRC aux sends 3 and 4 are fixed at post fader. I didn't think I could run monitors on aux sends that are post fade. Assuming I can run 4 monitor mixes, how would I run the 2 effect processors?

BTW, I rally appreciate all of the input. I'm learning a lot from you guys.

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