in concerts...whats that thing???

[BUDFREAK]

whats that thing stars use during concerts???the one thats plugged into their ears.....thanks

[Cailyn]

A headset, a personal monitor really which can contain their voice, instrument, the band, the drums, a click track, anything the performer wants.

[Brock]

It's called an In Ear Monitor...

I'd love to have one....

I HATE dealing with bad monitor sound.... It always happens, for some reason I can never hear myself. I have played TOO MANY gigs where i sang with NO monitor whatsoever...

I guess the only good that comes outta that is you learn to sing in key or you look like a fool... HA HA...

[Lurid Tone]

Yah, question answered
It's just to give the people more freedom and room to use on the stage. Otherwise they'd just use some small bit of the whole thing because they need their monitors.

[scooterlow]

Vocalist can also have more control over pitch and hear correctly the whole time there singing. You don't get weird frequency's by moving around the stage and hearing the guitar players rig jump out at ya when you walk by him.

[Vulconizer]

I had a guitar player's rig jump out at me one time.


I gave it the trusty old neck-pinch and now it has a limp and all it's good for is holding beer cans up off the floor.

[scooterlow]

AHHH Now that's funny ;P
I think you should just throw the beer cans at the crowd and save the space on stage for some tequila shots!!! Oh for the love of Mike as my Mom used to say. I never knew what the hell she meant either.

[TheMusicMan]

In-ear monitors are awesome. As a Live Sound Engineer, every in-ear monitor I get to mix makes it that much easier to control levels on the stage. Achieving a solid loud FOH mix while keeping the monitor mix consistent for the musicians is a challenge made simple with in-ears.

Admittedly, with in-ears you HAVE to have a console with that many more AUX outs, but it's a pain worth dealing with, IMO. I hate working a show where the musicians demand a mix so LOUD that the Mains can't hardly cover up the stage volume.

There's nothing more frustrating than trying to make a good mix for a band, and having to crank it through the roof simply to balance. Hearing loss is a huge issue at the levels some of these groups demand. Here's an interesting notion:
I worked a show on the Faith Hill/Tim McGraw tour a couple years back, loading in and loading out the road crew. They flew 4 stacks of JBL line-arrays, approx. 25 ft tall by 6 ft. wide. Those babies moved some air. In the arena we were in, you could feel a pulse of air waft past you in the tunnels outside of the main concourse with every beat of the drum. It was insane, but when you were in the arena, it was not insanely loud.

But when I go to a club to mix some metal band, they crank it so loud on a pair of EV 15" subs and matching full-range boxes that I feel like I can't sit still for 30 seconds without losing my hearing. Why the huge jones for volume at the expense of quality?

Seems to me, in-ear monitors solve this problem by keeping the sources close to the musicians so they can turn it up and focus on their music. That leaves me to work on the main mix and get it sounding sweet. Sound like the way to work to you guys?

[runawaymartin]

Totally agree with the MusicMan . . I've been using in-ears on stage now for the past 3 years or so . . . great benefits for performer and FOH engineer alike . . .

[MetalGod]

Yep, me too. We're even using in-ear in our rehearsal room, which is excellent. Means we don't have to crank the PA like mad for the me (singer) and keyboarder to hear ourselves over drums and guitar, everyone can hear exactly what they need to hear and we reduce the hearing damage risk quite significantly (which is a GOOD thing since we are all a bunch of hovering-around-40 metalheads and therefore already have all the hearing damage we will ever need )