So it's been a couple of months since we received some new in-ear monitors, which we have paired with wired headphone amps. It took a bit of getting used to, but I have to say that we are suitably impressed with the combination, and for live looping this setup is fantastic.
First the monitors.
Mark and I have played numerous shows where our performance was hindered by poor monitoring. Using live loops means that we have to be able to clearly hear the loops above the din of everything else we put on top of them. Mark particularly has a hard time hearing the guitar loops above his drum kit, which can make timing an issue. So we decided that we needed to take monitoring into our own hands and look at some in-ear solutions.
I had spent a long time researching in-ear monitors. Despite the wealth of info on wireless systems, there's very little discussion of the monitors themselves. It quickly became apparent that it was going to cost an arm and a leg to get a decent setup going, but then I found Alien Ears. These guys make custom monitors cheap. You can even produce your own molds, so that you don't have to go to an audiologist. I was a little sceptical at first, but when I got my partner to inject the goop into my ears for the mold, I was suprised at how easy it was and how well they turned out. The guys at Alien Ears were good with the communication and made the process relatively painless.
Now we did cheap out a bit and go for the low end monitors with only 1 driver in each monitor. This makes the sound rather tinny with a lot of high-end. It wouldn't be great for monitoring bass, or drums, but given that we're using them to monitor keys/guitars/vox it works great because it actually cuts through the ambient sound and makes the loops really stand out. Plus they are upgradeable, which means that if we want to go to 2 or even 4 driver monitors we can do so without having to buy a whole new pair! That's a pretty good deal.
With the monitors figured out, we needed an amplifier solution. We needed headphone amps that were small and had limiters built in. After a little research I sent an email to the boys at Rock-On-Audio, who gave us a nice little discount (thanks guys). These little amps are perfect for a wired solution. Given that neither Mark or I run around stage like madmen, we didn't need to go wireless, and wired is so much cheaper. The RockBox amps give us each control over monitor volume, and provide a limiter to protect our ear-drums. Not to mention that they can take a line or speaker level feed means that they are useable in virtually every gig situation.
So with our monitoring situation figured out, we look forward to many more great gigs!
Comments