HOW TO build a Cheap SELF MIXED In Ear Monitor rig for your band.

in-ear monitors you keep hearing how good they are you turn up to a show your mixes are saved all you do is plug in and you're ready to play today I'm going to show you everything you need to know to set up an in-ear monitoring rig for your band hey my name is Chris I'm a tour manager and sound engineer I work with quite a few bands as well as mixing the bands I also help build the rigs they use to play the live shows this includes an in-ear monitors rig traditionally you'd have the band set up on stage and all the microphone lines would run to the stage box which then feeds the front-of-house console the front-of-house console will then mix the main mix for the audience and it will also mix the monitors onstage in larger venues there is also a separate monitor desk usually side stage that will mix the monitors for the band with a self-contained inia mixing system instead of the lines running from the microphones straits of the stage box they instead run to a splitter which basically creates a duplicate of every mic one of which gets fed to the band's own in-ear mixing console and the other one gets fed to the stage box for the front of house console to mix the show both signals are completely separate you can leave the front of house engineer to do his thing and you can have control over your own mix in your ears the beauty of this setup is there's not many parts involved all you need is a splitter an in-ear mixing console and an in-ear transmitting and receiving system it's also really nice to get it all in a flat case that you can bring up in one unit and put on the stage rather than have tons of cables to plug in every day you obviously also need a bunch of cables to plug it all together I've linked to all the products in this video in the description below so I play in a band called led by lanterns and today we're going to reconstruct our in-ear monitoring rig so that you can see how it's put together the heart and soul of any in ear monitoring system is the in-ear mixer here we have the behringer XS 16 it has 16 inputs for mono outs as well as a stereo out so you can set it up in a variety of ways for example a band with five members might use for mono mixes as well as a fifth stereo mix you can also set it up as three stereo mixes two stereo mixes and two mono mixes there are other mixers that could support more inputs and more outputs the behringer x32 rack for example which a lot of bands use coupled with an S 16 stage box can take 32 inputs and do 16 outputs meaning you can get 8 stereo mixes it all depends on the size of your band the behringer XS series of mixers though is definitely the cheapest range to get started with they do a 12 channel 116 channel one and an 18 channel one again all depends on how many inputs you need to have a stereo mix you have to have a wireless receipt sender and receiver that supports a stereo signal my band only has mono transmitters and receivers they're a lot cheaper ideally I would love to have stereo but mono is what we have for now we use the Shore PSN 200 s I think they're around 350 pounds they could be cheaper now I personally wouldn't pay any less for them it's relying on a wireless signal you're gonna be moving about stage it's gonna be a lot of extra signals going on in the air and if you go any cheaper than that you start to find hissing and dropouts and that's the last thing you need when you're performing just takes you right out of the zone our drummer however because he doesn't have to move during the show is on a wired system so we've used the main out of the mixer as a stereo feed for his ears so our drummer has a stereo mix so the XR 16 has no control surface instead it broadcasts a Wi-Fi network Billy connect you with our phones and then phones have software like this where you can mix your own in-ear mixes on your right on your phone on your laptop on your iPads and each band member can mix their own ears this is why it's such an efficient system and you need to get it what I would say is the Rooter that's built into the X air isn't the best you kind of lose connection all the time you don't want to die it's gonna slow down your soundcheck so just as an example we'll get the soundcheck plug everything in we'll play a song and I'll go up I need a bit more guitar in my ears done I don't need to ask anyone anything our singer if he wants a bit more vocal he can just do it himself as well he's very quick very efficient it's also saved so when you turn it back on at the next show you have exactly the same mix to start from he'd not start from scratch every time so let's connect it all together this flight case is one that I found on Facebook marketplace for sixty pounds I strongly advise to do a similar thing there's loads of great deals out there this one shock mounted and it's 16 units high we also use it to store our campers and our playback system for the band to make it as much of a self-contained unit as possible I've stripped our rig back to the basics and I'm showing you all the connections outside of the rig on the floor just to make it a bit clearer for you so first of all the splitters you need to put them somewhere easily accessible because they will act as the stage box while you're in the venue these are the behringer ms 8000 splitters they're about 80 pounds each and they can split eight channels each we have the idiom ixr we have the in-ears transmitter and receiver pack we have the in-ear earphones and we have the venue stage box we have a series of multi-core cables to make these connections to go from the first eight channels from the splitter to the mixer we have an XLR 2 XLR loom that has a chart so go from the second set of 8 channels to the mixer we have an XLR to balanced jack loom without channels then to go from the 16 copies of these channels out to the stage box we have a longer XLR 2 XLR loom that has 16 channels to go from each mix output on the nes mixer to the ears transmitters we just use short XL ours here I'm just showing one for simplicity but to add more you just copy the process as I mentioned the built-in Wi-Fi router of the X air is definitely not the best so here we connect an external Wi-Fi router using an Ethernet cable to the console and all you power cables for everything screw it all into the case and you're good to go so a thing to remember while using an in-ear system like this is courtesy so for example if you're a small band opening up for a much bigger band get there early explain to everyone that you using the self mixed in ear system get the sound engineer from the venue on your side and don't don't be shocked if you have to do a show or two without having all your drum lines running through your ears it's all about working together to make the night as efficient as possible try and stay till the end because it might be easier for you to leave the lines running through your splitter for the whole night for all bands rather than having to repack at mid-show what is an option to get off monitor wedges is to just get the in-ear transmitter and receiver packs and give them to the house engineer for him to send you a mix straight to your ears it's not ideal because you're gonna hear different things in your ears every day and also it's kind of dangerous you've got a someone you don't know who could just push up a volume at any second and absolutely definitely mid-show it's kind of a risky move in all honesty I would wait and save up get the mixer the X air is only about 200 pounds right now so that's it you're all plugged in ready to go what I would do get to a rehearsal studio plug all your microphones in get your phone's plugged in get playing mix your own ears I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that in the next video so subscribe turn on the notification valve this is actually my first ever youtube video so let me know if you liked it or not any questions about the whole thing I might have missed some details maybe I might do a second video to fit it all in ask any questions in the comments I'll do my best to answer but thanks [Music]

Channel: Chris Lanterns

Views: 35,567

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Id: VgtVb3pUu8c

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020