Starting with In-Ear Monitors

Moving your worship team to in-ear monitors has a lot of benefits if you can overcome the challenges and not get tripped up by the frustrations along the way.

A lot of people wonder, “Will I hate in-ear monitors?" and "How can I make my in-ear monitors better?” So let’s take a look at the 5,000-foot view of getting started with in-ear monitors. I’ll guide you through some of the decisions you'll have to make so that you don't get frustrated and quit halfway in.

Let's start with why you would want to move to in-ear monitors from monitor wedges. Even if it's clear in your mind, or if you already know you want to make the switch, it can be really helpful to be able to articulate these things to band members that might not want to make the shift (or to the leadership team that might have to pay for it).

What are the Benefits of In-Ear Monitors?

The first reason to move to in-ear monitors is no monitor wedges on stage. We can reduce a lot of the stage noise and the buildup of low frequencies that spill off from the stage into the audience seating area by eliminating those monitor wedges.

The other benefit of in-ear monitors over monitor wedges is that it's a lot less likely to feedback through your vocal mics. This also avoids the sound tech solo, which is when something goes wrong and everybody turns around to look at the sound tech. We want to avoid that at all costs, and in-ear monitors help.

A third reason to eliminate monitor wedges is that it can eliminate clutter on the stage. With in-ear monitors, you can go wired or wireless. The wired versus wireless debate is a long one but simply put, if you really need a really clean stage, go wireless. If you don’t need a really clean stage, go wired. Wireless batteries are an ongoing expense, and wireless gear is a little bit harder to maintain than a cable. If you don’t, I recommend wired because batteries are an ongoing expense, and wireless gear is a little bit harder to maintain than a cable. Whichever one you choose, make sure that it fits the values of your ministry, and make sure that you're being a good steward of all your resources.

Another benefit of in-ear monitors is the ability to use a talkback mic. A talkback mic allows the worship leader or a band leader to communicate with the team without making noise on stage. You could do this with a dedicated mic that just is fed to the band's ears and not to the house mix. Or you can have a switch that sends two channels to the soundboard, one of which just goes to the ears. The other one is the main normal vocal channel. It's a huge benefit to be able to steer the team in a way that you didn't communicate beforehand, but you need to right in that moment. Maybe you're switching songs in the setlist, or you're going to deviate from the arrangement that you planned on and you want to let the team know ahead of time so that nobody makes a fool of themselves.

If you're wanting to use a foot switch to use the push-to-talk function, there's the Proco Panic Button. There's one by Throne Room Pedals, and Whirlwind and Radial also make one.

Another huge benefit of moving to in-ear monitors is the ability to play to a click track. A click track or a metronome for their particular song can help the team stay on the tempo that you decided on before you were tired and before you were excited. So instead of having the tempo shift up and down in the middle of a song (or start much faster than it should have and then feels awkward to slow it back down to where it should be), everybody has a standard that they're aiming for.

Aside from providing more consistency, it also raises the bar for the musicianship on your team. Playing to a click means that people have to practice to a click, and it improves their musicianship and their self-awareness of where they are in the timing spectrum. And if you start practicing with a click and get better, team members are likely to practice more in general as well. So by raising that standard, you're inviting them to better their skills to the glory of God, and that's a win.

Once your team can play with a click track, that opens up a whole new world of playing with multitracks as well. Multitracks are a way to play along with pre-recorded tracks to beef up the arrangement. You are able to add parts or instruments that you might not have on your team that people are used to hearing on the record or on the radio so that that can be a part of your worship service even if you don't have the 12 guitar players it took to make that track.

Now, one thing that comes with playing with multitracks is that you also have the guide track, or a little voice in your ear that tells you what section is coming up next and then counts it off as it comes in. This helps to remind everybody on the worship team what's coming next and how you pre-planned the arrangement. Getting into multitracks and all the details of that is beyond the scope of this blog post, but you can't really do that unless at least one person has in in-ear monitors and you're following that person. It makes it a lot easier if everybody's in in-ear monitors and everybody can hear the guide and the click. Oh and if you're the worship leader, that also reminds you to give the congregation vocal cues, which are super helpful for getting people ready to sing right on the first part of the line.

Another question you might be asking about moving to in-ear monitors is how are we actually going to create the mixes that everyone hears? Well, there are a few different options, and the first one that I like to recommend is to use a personal monitor mixer. This puts individual channels at the control of each person on stage. These can be fed from your front-of-house console, and it doesn't usually require a whole lot of extra infrastructure to do.

Some examples are the Behringer P16 system, or in the Allen and Heath universe, there’s the ME series of monitor mixers. There's also some from PreSonus, and Aviom is a popular option too. Now, I've heard great things about the Klang system, but I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. After I do, I'll be sure to make a video for you guys.

Personal monitor mixers are great, but they do add a little bit more stuff on stage. So if you're wanting to go fully wireless, another option is to use a phone or a tablet that's remote controlling an aux send or a mix on the board that's feeding your in-ear monitor. You can still do this wired too, so don't think that just because you're using remote control means that you have to be wireless.

It's one thing to teach a singer or a musician how to mix their monitors on a little monitor mixer in front of them. It gets a little bit more complicated sometimes with people that aren't used to mixing on a phone, and they can get tripped up or select the wrong mix for their output, and things just get tricky. Sometimes the app works better on Android versus iPhone or there are connectivity issues, and that can get a little bit tricky. So that's why I typically recommend the personal monitor mixers.

One more pro tip is that if you're going to have a phone or tablet control of your console, make sure that that's on a dedicated wifi network so that it's got its own traffic and it's not competing with other people that might be bringing their phones in as the service starts.

Now, the third way to mix in-ear monitors is to have the front-of-house engineer or a dedicated monitor engineer there to make changes based on the requests coming from the team. This can be really helpful if you have a bunch of people on stage, but again, the engineer can only do one task at one time. So while you might be able to get an extra set of ears and professional results from a monitor engineer, you have to have the person to put in that spot as well, and they have to develop the skills of mixing monitors. If you're asking your front-of-house mixer to do both, that can mean that that's less time that they're spending practicing and getting the front-of-house mix developed. So there's a trade-off with resources, and you have to think about that when you're making the switch. If you really feel that you do need the attention of a dedicated monitor engineer, just remember that that's another person that you have to fill in a volunteer position every week. So while that might be a great option, you have to think about the resources you have, and if you're a small-to-medium-sized church, you're probably really blessed if you've got a different front-of-house engineer every week of the month.

What are the Down-Sides of In-Ear Monitors?

Next, let's talk about why you might be hesitant to move to in-ear monitors, and if you don't have these hangups, some people on your team might. The first hangup that a lot of people have to overcome is moving their team to in-ear monitors when they don't really want to. If people are afraid or timid about making their own monitor mix, they're probably not going to dive in and do all the experimentation that it takes to dial things in and to get it feeling just right. And with monitor wedges, if somebody's mix is really bad, everybody can tell.

But in in-ear monitors, you’re isolated, (which we talked about why that's a good thing) but if the mix is really bad or too loud, nobody knows but that one person. And that's only a good situation if you don't care about that person, and you should care about the people on your team. When we listen at high levels for too long, that can cause noise-induced hearing loss, and aside from a creative miracle that doesn't get reversed, it can be permanent. So always remind your team to run their monitor mixes a little bit quieter. Keep the energy up, make sure that it's well-balanced and you can hear yourself, but please don't damage your hearing.

One crutch that people will use when their mix isn't good is instead of having both in-ear monitors in, they'll take one out, and that's a problem for a few reasons. The first is that before when you had both ears in, you had a stereo mix. So you could put the most important stuff right in the middle, you could put the stuff that you need to kind of pay attention to (but have quieter) down on the outsides, and that still gives you enough distinction between the different instruments that you need to pay attention to.

When you go from two ears to one, you're not cutting your mix options in half. You're cutting them a third, because instead of center, left, and right, now you just have one side and it all has to be in the middle. The other problem with this is that sometimes the click track, which we like for the worship team, then gets caught in an open microphone, and now everybody is hearing that lady say “Intro, two, three, four!” That's really obnoxious, right? So keep both in-ear monitors in so that nothing spills into a microphone unnecessarily.

Another concern with taking one in-ear out is that your brain won't recognize when it's too loud because your brain takes the average of both ears to give you the warning sign that “Hey, this is too much intensity.” So if one ear is much quieter than the other one, because it doesn't have a driver in it, you can damage your hearing and not realize it. Now, if your team is struggling to keep both in-ear monitors in, I've got another hack for you that I'll share in just a second.

Another reason why people hesitate to move to in-ear monitors is that musicians and singers sometimes miss the feeling of having sound all around them. And they're not crazy, you actually do perceive sound through the tactile response on your skin. One thing that some people really struggle with is not getting enough base response from their in-ear monitors. One thing that will kill the base response in your in-ear monitors is not having a proper seal around the ear canal where they go in. Let me go into just a little bit of nerdiness for you: low frequencies have a really long wavelength. For instance, the lowest note on the bass guitar is over 20 feet long. So to create that wave with such a small speaker, we need to have a sealed environment in your ear canal. So getting properly fitting tips will make sure that you're actually hearing the bass response from those in your monitors. So if you run into somebody that's got their mix cranked up really loud, and the base is super loud and they still need more, that's a sign that their tips might not be sealed properly in their ear canal.

There are products out there that can shake your seat or the platform you're standing on to give a tactile response of the low end, and that can be cool, but that doesn't really work for me. It might work for you, it might not. So that could be a solution that keeps the stage noise down, but you might have to test it out and see.

Now singers specifically have some other problems that come up with transitioning to in-ear monitors, and the first one is the inner hum. So if you stick your fingers in your ear and say, “Nobody leaves humming the kick drum.” That hum you heard in your voice? It’s the bones resonating through your skull and then into your inner ear. To combat this, make sure that your singers have properly fitting in-ear monitors. Sometimes the change in depth of the in-ear molds can change the way that they perceive that inner hum, and they can hear themselves more clearly through their in-ear monitors.

Another hack is to pan their voice over to one side, either a little bit or all the way. This helps their brain distinguish the difference between what's resonating through both ears and what they're hearing from their microphone.

Another singer problem can be balancing and blending with the other singers, especially if they're used to sharing a monitor mix on a monitor wedge, they had to audibly change their voice in order to blend and hear themselves along with everyone. That's kind of a blessing to make singers do that, but when they have their own mix that can mean that they have to control the level and the balance of somebody else's microphone, and that's what they're using to balance and blend and make sure that their voices are coming together in a cohesive way. Another way to fix this is to have them run their in-ear monitors pretty quietly. When you're listening really quietly, you have to lean in a little bit to pay attention to those details. But when you do, that can make everything stand out and be a little bit easier to balance. You might be missing some of the energy, mixing at a quieter level, and you can also turn it up after, but if you start balancing your mix at a quiet level and then bump it up a little bit if you need a little bit more energy, that can help a whole lot.

Now this next concern you might have affects a lot of people when they're trying to make the switch to in-ear monitors, and that's that they're afraid that they're going to feel isolated from the congregation. Especially if you have bright lights shining on you, you can't see how well people are engaging. But if people are singing loud, if you've got monitor wedges and your ears are unplugged, you can hear them really clearly. So to have that taken away by isolating your hearing with in-ear monitors can take away that feeling of connectedness that you had to the people that you're leading.

So to overcome this, I've got a really simple solution and it doesn't cost a whole lot of money. You have to incorporate stereo crowd mics into your in-ear monitors for them to work really well. Even just a pair of inexpensive vocal mics on two stands on either side of the stage pointed out at the audience (roll up the high-pass filter and make sure that they're not too rumbly) can give you a whole lot of feeling of what you would be hearing if you didn't have in-ear monitors in in the first place. Yes, you can upgrade these mics and use shotgun mics and hang them up in the ceiling, and those are awesome, but it just takes a couple hundred dollars with a pair of vocal microphones and it can instantly open up a whole new world of space where you feel connected to the congregation. This also helps people keep both in-ear monitors in because if you rely heavily on those crowd mics, you deal less with the inner hum. You deal less with feeling disconnected and like you want to pop it out. So if you've already fed yourself some of what's going on in the room, there's a lot less difference between what's in your in-ear monitor and what you would be hearing on stage.

Which In-Ear Monitors Should You Buy?

The final question you have to answer before jumping into in-ear monitors is, which ones do I buy? Should you buy some universal-fit in-ear monitors that have different tips or foam that kind of help seat that into place? Or should you go ahead and spend the extra money to get custom molds? If you're just starting out, I recommend getting some inexpensive universal-fit in-ear monitors and just seeing how it goes. For a lot of people, they work great and they don't need any more than that. So they don't have to invest their resources that they could put into something else.

If you've bought the universal fit kind and you're still struggling and things aren't fitting exactly the way that you want them to, either they're a little bit too big and make your ear canals a little bit uncomfortable after wearing them for a long time, or on the flip side, they're just a little bit too small, and so the seal is hit or miss, then it could probably be time to upgrade for some custom molds. See if you can find a company where you can demo some of the universal fit kind to find the driver combination that you really like, and then order custom molds from that same company.

Now, are the cheap ones really worth the savings? They might be. For some people, all they really need to hear is the lead vocal, so they know where the melody is and where you are in the song, the timing reference, and a pitch reference, and they can play their part awesome. For other people, they have to feel like they can hear everything in the whole mix, and they need all that detail in order to make it sound like they're part of the team. And that's the auditory response that they really need. So for me, that's when it becomes worth it to really spend money on in-ear monitors.

You have to remember, this is the only window through which we're experiencing the whole musical world while we're playing and singing. So it makes sense that that little window, even though it's a small thing and somebody might think you're like uppity for spending a lot of money on in-ear monitors, that's how you experience the worship team while you're on stage. Nobody makes fun of a marathon runner that has expensive running shoes. Every step they take goes through those shoes, so it's worth it to have a nice pair. Same thing with your in-ear monitors. It can really be worth it to invest in some of that, especially if you're a singer. Think about the bass player, guitar player, and drummer that have spent a whole lot of money on their instruments, both to buy them in the first place, and for upkeep. When you compare it to that, it's not a big jump to spend a lot of money on your in-ear monitors.

Of course, I have to remind you that you can't just throw money at a problem to make it go away. If you're not following the rest of the steps on how to create a good mix in the first place and making sure that you've got quality crowd mics feeding into your in-ear monitors, then you're just going to have a better representation of a bad mix, and that's not going to help you play and sing better.

Personally, I've used some cheap in-ear monitors and I've used some universal-fit ones that are pretty nice. I have the MEE Audio M6Pros. They're really hyped up in the base, and if you like that and you like that feeling, that can be awesome for you. Personally, I don't like the hyped-up bass, but they're around $40-50 and they sound fine. As a person who mostly mixes audio and tries to get the tone just right, that coloration doesn't work for me. So I actually prefer my Clear Tune Monitors CE320 triple driver in-ear monitors. They're universal fit still, so they're not a custom mold, but they feel like they have a little bit more even-based response all the way down to the bottom. They have a little bit more of a flat frequency response, low into the deep lows. So especially if I'm playing bass, I can know that my notes are coming through evenly and that's important to me. I want to make sure that I'm sending the sound guy the best performance possible and the most musical dynamics as well. So that's important for me, although it might not be critical for you to have that. The problem that I run into is that I have small ear canals. So the foam tips for these in-ear monitors fit the best, but eventually, they feel a little bit like they're pushing on the inside of my ear canal, and I don't really like that. It gets uncomfortable after some time. So the next step for me is to make the jump into custom molds, but I’ll have to save up for that and I'll keep you posted on that journey as well.

One of the most helpful things for learning to mix your in-ear monitors and for teaching the rest of your team how to do it well so that they can have a great worship set and not be thinking about their mix, they’re thinking about worshiping and playing and singing, is to use virtual soundcheck to help with your soundcheck for monitor mixing specifically.

So virtual soundcheck is a way that you record all the different channels individually onto a computer and then play it back through the console as if people were playing. Audio engineers can use this to practice, but if your worship team is using it, they can set down their instruments and focus only on mixing their monitors with that band that day and with their singing and playing without them having to sing and play at the same time.

This makes a huge difference and takes a weight off the shoulders of everybody trying to play and sing halfway while they're mixing their monitors with their other hand. That way they can just play and sing a song they know really well, you record it, play it back and now everybody can put down their instrument, mix their monitors AND they can get a good mix dialed in at the beginning of rehearsal, and they're not just having to fiddle with it the entire time.

This also means that you as the worship leader or the sound tech can go and help people who might be struggling with their mix. Because you're not having to play right then, your hands are free to come and dial in somebody else's mix and get them up to speed. Some people just really struggle with it.

So if you're wanting to get this set up, I've got a free virtual sound check challenge that you can check out. It'll help you get set up with virtual sound check and then even for audio engineers, it will help you figure out what to practice after you do. It can make a HUGE difference.

So that was a lot of information and if you're still reading, thank you for joining with me and giving me your precious time and attention. If you know somebody else that's struggling with their in your monitors, or they're thinking about making the jump from monitor wedges to in-ear monitors, go ahead and share this post with them.

As always, remember: it's all about the low end, avoid the sound tech solo, and nobody leaves church humming the kick drum. 

FREE Virtual Sound Check Challenge: https://www.attawayaudio.com/vscchallenge

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