Nord User Forum

Hi.

Yet another post requesting advices for IEM. Sorry...

I am playing in an amateur rock cover band with a singer, a guitar, a bass, a drummer and me with my NS3.
Even if I think our musical level is not bad, our sound engineering skills has to be improved.
As a lot of other amateur rock band, the drummer plays loud which forces the volume to be very high, and me and the guitarist are constantly trying to correctly listen to our playing without increase our volumes too much and our sounds sometimes don't mix well.

The guitarist and bassist use their own amps and I'm wired to a Yamaha MG166CX mixing console with mics of the lead singer and guitarist for backing vocal. There are 2 monitor channels and a headphone channel (could maybe be used as another monitor channel).

The recently hired singer comes with its own wireless IEM. And I am very tempted to use IEM too to correctly hear what I'm playing (which could improve my performance) and protect my ears.

I read a lot Nord User forum and other forums and I can imagine a wired solution which could fit my needs:
- Westone IEM Pro AM X30, because I know I don't like to be fully cut off from outside. I expect this IEM allowing me to talk with others members and correctly hears instrument which are not in my mix.
- Rolls PM351 to plug the Nord, any monitor link from console and optionally a ambient mic if needed
- Fisher active amp in-ear stick

I have few questions:
- Even if it must be widely better than now, I don't know if hearing the loud sound from rest of the band through these ambient IEM can be a problem and force me to increase the volume of IEM.
How is the volume attenuation on this model?
Is it better than personal ambient mic connected to IEM mix?
- it seems that there are no Westone reseller in France.
Any equivalent IEM?
Or is it worth importing them? What about warranty?
- there is no limiter in PM351. It's why Fisher active amp is interesting, but it needs AAA battery which reduces interest of wired solution.
Is there another similar solution to avoid hardware with batteries? (in-ear stick with passive limiter, another little mixer which include limiter,...).
- I could also buy an IEM receiver to use same monitor mix of our lead singer. But are monitor needs of a singer and keyboard the same? Not sure...

Still a lot of questions before spending money and not to be sure it really fits my needs. I am very interested for any advice.

And sorry for the English mistakes.

Thank you.

I never tried an ambient IEM system although being interested. To me, it was more important to tighten my ear canals which was either not possible or very aching with stanard ear plugs. So I decided in favour of custom molds instead of an ambient system - couldn't find both together at a reasonable price.

My way to connect to my band mates (during rehearsals) is via ambience microphones - 2 small Rode NT5. You can even align them towards the right instruments. I don't mind my IEM amplifier being in need of a battery - it lasts for a while. On stage, I dont't use IEM until present - I'm the only one in the band.

As IEM is under full control of myself, I don't have a limiter in use until present. But I'm aware it's an important point.

By the way, I wouldn't want to use a plain singer mix for my IEM. Only if the singer was in love with the piano: I like it way louder than in the main mix.

toniolito wrote:Hi.

Yet another post requesting advices for IEM. Sorry...

I am playing in an amateur rock cover band with a singer, a guitar, a bass, a drummer and me with my NS3.
Even if I think our musical level is not bad, our sound engineering skills has to be improved.
As a lot of other amateur rock band, the drummer plays loud which forces the volume to be very high, and me and the guitarist are constantly trying to correctly listen to our playing without increase our volumes too much and our sounds sometimes don't mix well.

The guitarist and bassist use their own amps and I'm wired to a Yamaha MG166CX mixing console with mics of the lead singer and guitarist for backing vocal. There are 2 monitor channels and a headphone channel (could maybe be used as another monitor channel).

The recently hired singer comes with its own wireless IEM. And I am very tempted to use IEM too to correctly hear what I'm playing (which could improve my performance) and protect my ears.

I read a lot Nord User forum and other forums and I can imagine a wired solution which could fit my needs:
- Westone IEM Pro AM X30, because I know I don't like to be fully cut off from outside. I expect this IEM allowing me to talk with others members and correctly hears instrument which are not in my mix.
- Rolls PM351 to plug the Nord, any monitor link from console and optionally a ambient mic if needed
- Fisher active amp in-ear stick

I have few questions:
- Even if it must be widely better than now, I don't know if hearing the loud sound from rest of the band through these ambient IEM can be a problem and force me to increase the volume of IEM.
How is the volume attenuation on this model?
Is it better than personal ambient mic connected to IEM mix?
- it seems that there are no Westone reseller in France.
Any equivalent IEM?
Or is it worth importing them? What about warranty?
- there is no limiter in PM351. It's why Fisher active amp is interesting, but it needs AAA battery which reduces interest of wired solution.
Is there another similar solution to avoid hardware with batteries? (in-ear stick with passive limiter, another little mixer which include limiter,...).
- I could also buy an IEM receiver to use same monitor mix of our lead singer. But are monitor needs of a singer and keyboard the same? Not sure...

Still a lot of questions before spending money and not to be sure it really fits my needs. I am very interested for any advice.

And sorry for the English mistakes.

Thank you.

Hi, I think I can help.

I own the Westone ambient IEMs, but have moved on to other solutions. You will hear your loud drummer, guitarist, etc. -- but less of them. I put the audience PA mix in my ears with keys boosted a bit, as that mix will have normal levels of drums, guitars, etc. The Westone IEM design is somewhat unique. I would not buy mine again.

Normal IEMs provide some ambience. You also can take out one ear quickly if you need to hear something. Some people will set up a "room mic" and put it in their ears to minimize the sense of being sealed off. It works, but it's yet again more gear that needs to be carried, set up, etc.

I have recently switched to open-back headphones -- a modest pair of Sennheisers -- and I love it. I can hear everything on the stage (including loud drums and guitarts), but can adjust the rest of the mix so it all sounds very balanced in my ears. We all use the Behringer PM-16 personal mixers, so that's easy to do.

Depending on your setup, your PA mixer can provide output limiting to monitor sends. Your Rolls doesn't appear to have an adjustable limiter, but the specs say it maxes out at 0 dB total output, which is a limiter of sorts.

You can go wireless IEMs, but batteries will be involved. Singers like to move around (ours use them), but as a keyboard player I'm OK with being wired. You will want a different mix than what the singers want to hear, so I wouldn't be sharing monitor channels.

The best solution is when each musician learns to be responsible for their own stage volume

Also, the best deal are the inexpensive "chi-fi" IEMs.

They're ~$60 in the US, here is an example

We upgrade with foam tips and better cables, and they routinely outperform the much more expensive IEMs head to head.

FZiegler wrote:I never tried an ambient IEM system although being interested. To me, it was more important to tighten my ear canals which was either not possible or very aching with stanard ear plugs. So I decided in favour of custom molds instead of an ambient system - couldn't find both together at a reasonable price.

My way to connect to my band mates (during rehearsals) is via ambience microphones - 2 small Rode NT5. You can even align them towards the right instruments. I don't mind my IEM amplifier being in need of a battery - it lasts for a while. On stage, I dont't use IEM until present - I'm the only one in the band.

As IEM is under full control of myself, I don't have a limiter in use until present. But I'm aware it's an important point.

By the way, I wouldn't want to use a plain singer mix for my IEM. Only if the singer was in love with the piano: I like it way louder than in the main mix.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Since my message, I feel a bit less convinced about passive ambient IEM. I read that Westone one only attenuates the sound by 3db. Maybe more dedicated to musicians want a In-ear monitor in a relative quiet band, which is not my case.
As you said, I should rather go with ambiance mic and standard IEM (not ambient). The best could be these active ambient IEM where you can change the mix between "outside" and "inside" sound, but it's too expensive for a first try in IEM world: I need to go step by step. The singer says that the band is loud enough to hear them without ambient mic, but I don't which model she uses: I will ask her.
At first, I could try to use my little Zoom H1 as ambient mic, before buying a better one.

And there is still the problem of Fisher IEM stick with battery.
I think limiter is important to protect against unexpected sound peaks coming from mics, for instance. And sometimes from unexpected guitar sound peaks if amp sound is also redirected to the console and finally monitor link.
I read some posts talking about passive limiter, but it seems that limiter should be integrated at end of the sound chain (just before in-ear). I think that is because limiter setting should be correlated with final volume setting: high volume with low limiter could cut the sound to often and low volume with high limiter setting is useless (personal assumption).
And I would not be surprised if a good limiter couldn't be passive: a lot of web links to such a limiter seems to not work anymore. I suspect these type of limiter to be deprecated (2nd personal assumption ).

I would prefer to find a way to have a limiter without using battery. Maybe by using something else than the Rolls PM351 which seemed perfect for my use: DI, simple monitor/mic/instrument mixer and compact.
I could maybe find a small mixer with similar functionalities + limiter and use it with a DI/splitter and finally use a passive Fisher in-ear stick, but that contradicts the fact that limiter should be just before in-ear in the sound chain.

Thank you for your reply.

cphollis wrote: Depending on your setup, your PA mixer can provide output limiting to monitor sends. Your Rolls doesn't appear to have an adjustable limiter, but the specs say it maxes out at 0 dB total output, which is a limiter of sorts.

I'm interested on what you replied: what is the behavior of a mic peak (larsen effect for instance) with such a mixer? Because I think the volume is adjusted to keep a room for sound with higher volume. You think ears can be protected against sound at max of the volume with this hardware?
And why this type of sound can be very aggressive for ears with an amp? Just because the frequency involved in larsen effect is amplified until the max volume of the amp is reached?
I have difficulties to anticipate what will be behavior in such a situation. Maybe amp acts as volume multiplier and if a feedback loop occurs it goes to the max without limitation, while Rolls mixer cannot have a feedback loop when used with IEM: not sure of that.

cphollis wrote: You can go wireless IEMs, but batteries will be involved. Singers like to move around (ours use them), but as a keyboard player I'm OK with being wired.

I fully agree to be wired. Wireless is overkill in our case and have more drawbacks than advantages (especially if we add the cost in the equation).
It is why my concern is: should I use a passive in-ear stick without limiter or in-ear amp stick with limiter and batteries, or no limiter at all. For sure, I wouldn't want to have the drawback of using batteries which should be changed regularly.

The passive IEM converters are OK, but usually don't get loud enough. The battery powered ones are better, but still no adjustable limiter. To get "real limiting", you're going to need something that's not small and inexpensive.

Since these IEM devices have limited output (they're headphone amps), I've never really worried about limiting.

My PM-16 personal mixers are designed to work with Behringer gear, they have adjustable limiters that work well. But not what you're looking for.

I read a lot (too much) of forums, documentation of any sort of gear, asks store websites and manufacturers.

The current setup I'm looking for:
- Westone pro X20 or X30: I know the best for us are X30, but I think 450e is a way to much for a first IEM try. It's only a psychological limit: I'm not sure if it is worth to go for X30 now. And I'm not confident about chifi earbuds like KZ. Any other recommandations?
- Fischer in-ear stick: I wish I do not have to buy something with batteries, but I think a small limiter is better than nothing. And it will be more flexible to have this one (because of the integrated amp). I hope the battery duration will be long enough to not be too annoyed.
- Xenyx Q802USB/Yamaha MG10XU : I think a small mixer with two channel having a compressor slightly adjusted could be useful to avoid peaks on Aux from PA input and ambiant mic. Cons of the berhinger mixer is the weak power connector. I will test ambiant mic with a little zoom H1 I already own.

I will start with earbuds and in-ear stick and try with a small mixer I already have (but which is used for my home). And see if I really need compressors, because a Mackie Mix8 could a better choice than the behringer one.
And as a first step, I could connect headphone output of the Nord to the mixer. I think it will be sufficient, but, if needed, I could buy a Radial Pro D2 to better fit standards (yet another addition to the setup )

And I think the best is to build something and try to find my own way to go with IEM. But I can reach the target on my first (incremental) try, it could be great.

Let me know if someone has comment on the current state of my thoughts.

toniolito wrote: And as a first step, I could connect headphone output of the Nord to the mixer.

Please use the line-out and not the headphone output

Berretje wrote:

toniolito wrote: And as a first step, I could connect headphone output of the Nord to the mixer.

Please use the line-out and not the headphone output

Yes. I know that headphone output is louder. But in this case, I need a splitter/DI because main output is already connected to PA. I tried to connect the headphone output to my small behringer and it works (no saturation, no clipping). Gain should not be set to high, but the sound seems OK even by playing louder.

The aim is to build the setup step by step, allowing me to adjust my needs (maybe a professional tic ). Maybe, I will end up buying a Radial DI. Will see...