Members SpaceNorman Posted August 8, 2010 Members Share Posted August 8, 2010 I played my first real performance with my new IEMs tonight. So far, I absolutely love the reduced volume .... and can clearly hear the potential for absolute clarity that the IEM offers. However, reality is that I've still got some work to do in terms getting the IEMs figured out to the point that I can plan to use them exclusively. I won't lie - reality is that I struggled to get a mix that I was happy with ... and never really got there - in spite of having the FOH board within reach all night long. I need to take a few minutes and set up my rig in the garage and play with it some to get the "gain points of control " under control. While they were far from perfect tonight - it's clear to see tha we'll be test driving them regularly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members trmckenz Posted August 8, 2010 Members Share Posted August 8, 2010 awesome!! curious... what instrument do you play? what did you struggle with hearing? why did you struggle hearing certain things? what all was mic-ed? is your mix simply coming from an aux send in mono? we just started rehearsing with our IEMs and we're trying to "debug" our mixes before we hit the road! (we mic everything ourselves) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SpaceNorman Posted August 8, 2010 Author Members Share Posted August 8, 2010 curious... what instrument do you play? what did you struggle with hearing? why did you struggle hearing certain things? what all was mic-ed? is your mix simply coming from an aux send in mono? I'm a keyboard player ... and in the case of last night's gig - the "run from stage" soundguy. I use the "soundguy" term pretty loosely - I'm not a very active in the course of the night ... my goal is to tune gain and tone during sound check, find a generic mix that works .... and then pretty much forget about it (aside from the master volume faders) for the rest of the night. My setup is as follows. The FOH board is A&H Mixwiz. Everything goes through the board - including a stereo drum submix and a stereo keyboard submix. The keyboard mixer is a Yamaha MG12/4FX. The keyboard mixer feeds a QSC RMX1450 and a pair of JBL JRX112M wedges. I run an AUX send from the FOH board into a channel on the keyboard mixer to get my "band" monitor mix. I'm hoping to feed my IEMs from the keyboard mixer. I'll have direct control of the "band monitor mix" I receive when I provide the PA and will be able to use the same setup and take my chances on the "band monitor mix" I get when I'm not. Ultimately, I'm going to install the Shure PSM200 transmitter that I own in the rack with the keyboard mixer. However, last night - I simply ran the IEMs out of the headphone jack on the keyboard mixer. Last night I heard my keys better than I think I've ever heard them on stage - and best of all, without initiating a volume war with the guitar player next to me. Because everybody uses individual amps as part of our sound - the "band" monitor rig is used almost exclusively for vocals and is sized accordingly. I expect that I'll need to continue to use my AMP/Floor wedges and have my keys "move air" so that others can hear me (I'm the only guy interested in going the IEM route at this point.). I did struggle getting the "band monitor mix" to where I wanted it last night. A hair twist of the AUX knobs on the individual channel strips seemed to either blast or remove the voice/instrument in question. There are 5 points at which volume can be influenced between the AUX knob on the FOH channel strip and the earphone jack on the keyboard submixer (the AUX knob on the channel strip, the AUX SEND level control on the FOH board, the input gain on the keyboard submixer channel strip, the channel fader and finally the headjack volume control). I suspect I've got a gain structure issue that I haven't nailed down yet. I also had some issues with exactly what was being monitored at the headphone jack. Because I don't want to / can't include the AUX send I receive from the FOH board in the submix I send to the FOH - there's some button pushing that needs to be get the right mix to the headphone jack. Unfortunately - the board wasn't behaving the way I expected. The only way I could get ALL channels to the headphone jack was to route it with the PFL button (pre-fader). The mix of keyboards is fine using that approach - however it mean that I had to use the input channel gain to control the incoming "band monitor mix". I'm hoping that this is a "RTFM" issue that I can solve this afternoon. Despite some rough spots - I'm excited about the IEMs. I popped one out a couple times in the course of the evening and was amazed at the the difference in volume!!! It was soo nice to NOT have to deal with LOUD! Although not quite where I want it yet - the sound I got last night wasn't bad. I am confident I'm going to love the IEM route once I get my setup tweaked right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members madjack Posted August 8, 2010 Members Share Posted August 8, 2010 Instead of running the band mix into a channel on your keyboard submixer, why not run an aux from your keyboard submixer into one of the two inputs on the PSM transmitter, and the band mix into the other input? Then you can blend to taste. Also, be careful running your earbuds out of the phones jack, unless you have a limiter in line for them. An accident, like unexpected feedback, could cause some real harm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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