Unfortunately it seems like he's no longer on this forum...

@crazyquik

Stage monitors and in-ear monitors serve the same function; let the musicians hear themselves for pitch and timing.

In-ear solve all the issues with feedback and the retarded musicians thinking that the monitor is supposed to sound good and not feedback.  It can't sound good and not feedback at the same time, and most musicians are sonic idiots.

How much of that is for hearing protection?

Hearing protection is certainly one reason for using in-ears, but there are multiple benefits.

One is consistency. An IEM system gives a touring band basically the same sound in their ears from venue to venue.

I've done monitors for a lot of touring bands who use the house monitor wedges and console at whatever venue we're all at, and to me it often seems like they're taking a gamble. I always do my absolute best, and generally make bands happy, but I reckon they occasionally walk into places with shitty monitors wedges, shitty monitors engineers, or both. Bringing in-ears helps. Bringing in-ears, your own monitor console, your own mics, and your own monitor engineer helps even more.

Another reason is the house sound. You can hear stage monitors in the house. Just because they're pointed at the musicians doesn't mean the audience can't hear them. Loud monitor wedges screw with the FOH engineer's ability to control his mix. There are times when I'll deal with muddy vocals when mixing FOH. I can cut the low end out of the vocalist's channel all day, but if it's coming from his wedge, I just have to keep dealing with it. Same goes for anything coming out of the stage wedges: drums, keys, guitars, whatever. If it's loud and audible in the house, there's nothing I can do about it.

In the old days the monitors played the same mix the audience heard through a separate set of speakers pointed back at the band, hence the term "foldback" system.

Now each musician gets his own mix. The trumpet player, for instance, may just want some of his horn and some keyboards coming through his monitor. If you have eight musicians on stage, the monitor guy is creating eight different mixes, each one tailored to the musicians' requests, respectively. It's all done on a different sound system than the one used for the audience.

Regarding the last question, it can be both. You can receive cues through your in-ear monitors in addition to hearing the performance. Separate "talk" mics are often set up for the former. These mics are only routed through the monitor system; they do not go to front of house since they're only meant for communication amongst the musicians and their crew. If you're ever at a concert and you see a performer walk up to a mic and talk into it, but you don't hear anything, he's talking to his band and/or the monitor guy through everyone's in-ears.

Hearing protection isn't generally an issue with stage monitors - honestly Surfire EP3/4s give a flat enough response curve that I have zero issues performing with them.  Foamies suck balls.

We used to run a splitter on the monitor setup that split everything in the snake to the monitor board and to FOH.  I ran monitors.  Deaf musicians under a tent, near the edge, are awful to work with.  You just can't get enough sound to their ear without feedback.

You can figure out pretty quickly where the feedback is and cut those frequencies but they are usually in the areas that the musician "needs" to hear.  1-1.5k, 4k, and 6-8k are what I recall being problem children under a tent.

Saying that monitors cannot sound good without feeding back may be going a little far.    If stage levels are kept reasonable, monitors can certainly sound alright.  Yes I know that "if" is a big one sometimes.

Saying that most musicians are sonic idiots may not actually be going far enough though.    Hoo boy.  I don't disagree with you there!

My favorite is when I'm asked to put reverb into the monitor...

I'm getting berated recording/programming/mixing some demos for my band by a professional right now.  A lot of it I understand from my live sound monitor and FOH experience but it is hard to put into practice without someone yelling at you.

Just a bump to keep this around.

How much of a percentage does Livenation take out for merchandising fees?  I recall awhile back a singer at a festival telling the audience to not buy their merch at the venue, and buy it directly from the band's site.  I get the impression it was at a ridiculous level

Do you work at one place, or many?

Most venues take a cut of merch. It isn't just a Live Nation thing.

Normally it's around 15% of soft goods (t-shirts, etc.). They usually don't take a cut of vinyl sales.

eta: sounds dumb for a musician to discourage on-site merch sales from the stage. A lot of bands do really well selling merch at their shows, even after giving a cut to the venue.

What challenges present themselves when coordinating with lighting and pyro?

I assume codex is the 'easy button' if the band is playing to a click?

Are musician initiated triggers still utilized in tandem in such a situation?

How prevelant is it for a band to play to a click, in general?

The reason I ask is I'm trying get a picture of how much of a pain it must be to set up shop in someone else's venue, with their PA. Surely you bring some equipment of your own, and I imagine you've been in these venues before, so it's not like you are walking in blind every time.
Are the IEM's a separate concern, or just another facet of setting up the PA?

I'm neither a lighting guy nor a pyro tech, but regarding the last question, lots of bands utilize click tracks live.

Tracks have become so acceptable now that bands don't shy away from using them anymore, even in more traditional genres. Last Friday I did a country show with a guy I used to work with years ago. He's not one I suspected would've used tracks, but he now uses them and a click.

I can tell you that most lighting is done independently by a Lighting Director who knows the band's show, and is not triggered by the actions of the musicians themselves.

As far as challenges go, I know that some lighting guys like to wear IEMs and have a feed from the audio console so that their cues can be on time and not laggy. The delay from the PA speakers to FOH makes a difference to them.

There's nothing wrong with walking in blind if you know what you're doing and the venue has a good house staff and a good system with quality mics, cables, hardware, etc. The show I was talking about from Friday was like that. The sound engineer had never been to our venue or used the type of console that we have, but I knew him and knew that he was competent, so all I had to do was answer a couple of questions for him and he was off to the races.

That said, there is a gamut of preparedness that goes from being fully self-contained to being almost entirely dependent on the venue for both the equipment and the operators. It comes down to the venue having a good Production Manager with whom you can advance the show. So you're not really going in "blind." You may be dependent on the venue for all your production needs, and may be entering it site unseen, but you've been assured by the PM that you'll be well taken care of. Or you could tell him that you're fully self-contained and that his house techs will be sitting on their asses all day. In that case, all they'll be using are "stacks and racks", i.e. the house PA, and all I'll do is hand them drive lines and that's it.

In reality, most of the time it's somewhere in between, with the band bringing some audio equipment and the house supplementing the rest.

Regarding IEMs, they are always a separate concern. I pity the guy who is a band's sole sound engineer and is responsible for both monitors and FOH. It's doable, but not much fun IMO, especially if you're talking about wireless IEMs and the RF concerns that come with them. Going back to Friday, that was the situation their guy was in. At one point during soundcheck a musician came down to FOH with a faulty pack. The sound guy had to run up on stage, re-sync it, and run back to FOH. He did it without hesitation, but you could tell it frustrated him. You should have a separate engineer on or near the stage to deal with that stuff, or at least a musician in the band who can.

IIRC the festival was a fundraiser, and the band got pissed at the venue for taking a percentage of the proceeds they were donating to the charity.

Well, that's different, but an example of not working those details out in advance and trying to settle them from the stage.

It should be spelled out in the contract what, if any, cut from a band's merch sales goes to the venue. Some contracts say 0%.

Having one of those days at the venue where it's the first day of the band's tour. These are always interesting.

They're not carrying any consoles, so I spent a lot of time along with our other audio guy helping their FOH engineer come up with a scene for ours. We're starting from scratch, but he'll be able to save it and load all his settings if he encounters this particular console again in another venue.

They'll do a soundcheck and then spend the afternoon rehearsing, since apparently they didn't have adequate time to practice before the tour began.

You have to be flexible on days like this because obviously the band and their crew have kinks to work out. One of the first things I was asked for today was a rasp so that they could file a sharp burr off of one of their road cases. It was the lead singer's amp case and he was worried about cutting himself.

People can be a little on edge since it's their first show of the run, but you try to do everything you can to help and set them at ease. So far, so good.

Anyone we may have heard of?

A very mellow, indie-type band called Phosphorescent.

Steel Panther today

Chris Isaak on Sunday

Awesome!

Our 5 piece rock band mostly likes wedge monitors. My goal is to make us as easy to work with, and make reasonable requests. We’ll likely just be openers for bigger acts this year or doing our own bar & outdoor party gigs.

For my lead vox position, I like to use my Sennheiser EW-D wireless with a V7 capsule and my Sennheiser G2 in-ears. Both are in US-legal frequencies.  For our most recent gig at an open mic, we used the house’s back line with wedges & my wired V7. It went ok but minimal like check on unfamiliar gear was a challenge.

--Our stage plot/tech rider lists the RF frequencies and ranges. It lists first preference for RF mic and IEM but contingency options all the way down to my wired V7 and a minimal monitor mix count of 2.

-How likely would a house prefer that I use their RF gear instead of mine? I like my capsule for hygiene but want to sound good. The V7 seems to do the job when I do my part.
-How to ask for a what I want on a tech rider so it makes sense & doesn’t make sound tech’s job hard? I supply an identical wired mic to backup my wireless handheld. For a show, I’ll ideally want a muted wedge ready to go if my ears go down, but I’ll also have a backup wired Behringer P2 for mono IEM.

We’re not fully self contained yet, so need house mics except for my lead vox. At rehearsal space, I control my entire mon mix.  For IEMs I’m thinking of requesting either a flat or foh mix and my vox on top to taste if there’s not time to do a detailed ear mix. That could either be mixed by mon engineer or sent vocals minus on one channel and uncompressed vox on channel 2. My body pack does a “focus” mode (ie adjustable ‘more me’ between ch1 & ch2.) I could even send a split mic signal to house & take a foh/flat plus my mic split to my digital mixer for my Iems. I have an XR18 and/or an XR32 capable of taking 16 tails from the FOH

Is this too fussy? I’m open to ways to bring a house-friendly IEM rack for just one user & not make the monitor job any harder than it needs to be.

Thoughts?

"-How likely would a house prefer that I use their RF gear instead of mine? I like my capsule for hygiene but want to sound good. The V7 seems to do the job when I do my part."

It depends. At my last venue they had a solid, two channel Shure ULX system with wireless Beta 58 mics that were available to anyone. It was always the band's call on whose wireless system we'd use, theirs or ours. My preferences only came into play if theirs sounded like shit, or they had RF issues that they couldn't fix themselves. In those situations I'd offer up ours.

At my current venue, house wireless is only available for a fee. They're more protective of it and will not offer it up unless there's a rental agreement.

If your V7 works for you and the RF is clean, I'd make every effort to make it work for me at FOH.

I don't know exactly what you consider your part in this to be, but I'll give you my two cents. You're responsible for making your wireless work on your own, and that means doing RF coordination on the fly. There is no need to list your frequencies and ranges on your rider. None of that matters to the venue. You say you'll be opening for bigger acts. If you show up to the gig and the headlining band already has 24 channels of wireless gear up and running, will you be able to scan using your own equipment and find available frequencies? Or if you have a gig in a different city where the RF landscape is different?

You might find a nice, competent house tech who has the time to help you coordinate your RF gear if you run into trouble, but I would never count on that. It's always best when performers or their crew can do it themselves.

I'm going to be honest and tell you what irks me, and that's when bands ask me to do extra work because they're poor at operating their RF equipment. This includes asking me to set up a wedge in addition to IEMs "in case their in-ears go down." That to me screams rank novice. It says that these guys have failed in the past to set their stuff up right and it's bitten them in the ass, that instead of learning how to improve their RF skills they're lazy, going into venues expecting problems that the house sound guy will bail them out of on the fly. I know this sounds harsh, but this is what difficult musicians do.

You don't hear that from higher level touring bands. Most of them are wireless in-ears only. They don't clutter the stage with muted wedges that are only there as fail-safes. They make their IEMs work.

That's not to say that you don't have backups. You're just not setting up two different monitor systems, IEMs AND wedges. Bring your P2. It's much easier to take an XLR from a wireless IEM unit to a wired one than it is to go from ears to wedges. And have your spare wired mic on an empty channel and ready to go at all times even if your wireless mic is working perfectly. This is SOP.

I have to run right now and will address the monitor mixing question later. Question: do you have an analog splitter snake?

Thank you for this level of detail and honest criticism. My goal is to be the opposite of difficult. If the house’s setup is better, I’ll use it. I’ve shared plenty of mics in radio and voiceover work.

By “go down,” I mostly meant a place with crowded RF where I couldn’t find an open frequency. It makes sense to just delete the backup wedge. I’m still in my mindset from my day job about having backups to backups. One of the guitarists thinks his 2.4ghz is amazeballs. I’ve pointed out RF interference to him as it happens and explained that I don’t even use my old 2.4ghz mic in rehearsal. He’s apparently got to learn for himself that 2.4 is deprecated for performance. My own rack is running its own 5ghz router for mixer control on a phone or tablet.

My gear isn’t directly WWB or WSM compatible; RF coordination I assumed was my job but didn’t know if it was a good courtesy to include my bands. I scan first with my iem receiver bc it’s analog.  Next I scan with my mic receiver since it’s digital & less spectrum-hungry. On the horizon is a newer generation IEM, but this is “ok” for now as an FCC legal G2 UHF from Sennheiser. Miles down the road, my EW-D mic setup can start to integrate and have an upgrade path with EW-DX gear.

I’m assuming best practice without central RF coordination is to leave my transmitters on after finding open frequencies so nobody else jumps on them.

When we go outside our local area, my plan was to check thru Shure/Sennheiser websites if my ranges were available there. If not, I’d look for a rental house, ask about renting from the venue, or just go wired.

I don’t yet have a full splitter since I’m only sending my own 2 mics split to FOH and taking 1-2 channels of monitor. Splitter is next on my agenda. Do I need transformer isolated or passive? My stereo pair for stage sound is getting phantom power from my monitor mixer. I’m also debating between a rackmount splitter vs a stage box. Box is tempting so I wouldn’t have to leave my entire physical rack inline through the next several acts.

I don’t want to be a nuisance to the engineer for repatching since the rest of the band resists IEM. I’m flexible and aim to be scalable.

-Want me to take a split from your stage box (when I have a splitter), mix my own IEM, and just give you my own analog mic split? Ok. I’ll have a scene saved on my mixer as a starting point.
-Want to skip repatching and do mine as just another monitor mix? Ok.
-Want me to stfu, give you my mic split and use my own stereo pair to get stage sound for my own mix? Ok. That’s my stripped down rehearsal setup anyway.
-If the answer is that hybrid wedge and iem just doesn’t work, I’ll be disappointed but have an handful of filtered earplugs.  

Sidetrack question: Building an input list, drums are really up to the sound engineers’ discretion. Do I convey that by just arbitrarily listing the first 4 channels as kick/snare/overheads & note that actual channel count is per venue preference? If we don’t need an input list until we’re fully self-contained, that’s fine too. I can just give a stage plot.

It’s a lot of questions, I know. Thanks for the advice you’ve already given.

Let me start by taking back what I said about listing your RF gear and its frequency ranges. It's fine to leave it on your tech rider. I'm looking at one right now that has that exact info on it for today's band. The point that it means little to me, and that it's their thing, still stands, but it's always nice to know what bands are showing up with.

I'll admit that the array of ideas presented in your posts makes my head spin a little. I won't address each one, but will give you what I believe to be the easiest route for everyone.

Get a rack mounted analog splitter (passive is usually fine) and put it with your XR18. Run one set of tails to the XR18 and have at least 25' on the other set of tails to hand to the venue.

There is nothing wrong with having some band members on IEMs and some on wedges, with either the house engineer doing everyone's mixes, the IEM people mixing their own ears and the wedge people relying on the house guy to mix them, or the band doing all their own mixes, wedges included.

In your case, it sounds like you're the only guy on IEMs, and that you're capable and desirous of doing your own mix. That is fine. Simply tell the house engineer not to worry about you (you're mixing yourself on an iPad or phone, right?), but that the four other guys need wedges and that he will do their mixes.

Have the inputs on your splitter clearly and accurately labeled, and have the male XLR connectors on the house set of tails labeled in the same manner. The house engineer will love you if, when he's running his lines into your split, he knows what's what without having to ask you or look at an input list, and he will love you more when he's patching your tails into his stage box and it's similarly self-explanitory.

Speaking of the input list, it's OK to specify how you want drums and everything mic'ed up. I prefer bands be decisive and clear about how they do things. Just give it to me straight so that we can get to work. Most importantly, make sure that what you tell me is accurate. For me it's all about not having to do extra work because someone either gave me bad information or they omitted something. The other night we almost had a band patched when we started discovering bad channels on their 32 channel splitter snake. We decided to just switch from channels 1-16 to channels 17-32 (they, too, had an XR18) which wasted out time. If there are bad channels on your split, or any other weirdness, just tell us up front.

The house engineer will often use his discretion anyway. In the above scenario, I will sometimes add drum mics and simply bypass your rig. If I want a snare bottom mic, or to do a kick in/kick out thing, I'll run the extra mic lines directly into my stage box so that I can use them at FOH. I'll give you everything on your 16 channel input list so that you have everything you want in your IEMs, but I may take liberties elsewhere.

If you need me to clarify anything or have any other questions, just ask. I'm not doing much today.

That all makes a lot of sense & gives a good roadmap. Thanks.

No prob. The only question I think I missed was the one about leaving transmitters on at all times to keep others from snagging your frequencies. It's cool to do so.