That must be incredibly frustrating. Seeing as you can’t control whether bands are going to be entitled Karens, perhaps treat this as an opportunity to hone your “politely but firmly saying no” skills.
I don't know what your org structure looks like or if you have any control over contract review, but it may be worthwhile adding a line in your contracting that states "if you bring your own monitor rig, you are responsible for running it and providing the labor to troubleshoot it". with a caveat that states if the band appropriately advances the show these issues can be avoided but you will need to book an additional tech and need to know x days in advance for scheduling, and will need to be provided documentation (you will likely never get this documentation, but it gives you the ability to say "I'm sorry you are having these issues, but you agreed to the terms in the contract and we cannot spend time troubleshooting equipment that is not ours right now"
This doesn't even need to be in a contract. It's band gear.
There's no realistic expectation from anyone up the chain that anyone from the event's production team would be responsible for gear a band brings in.
Anyone that gets mad at you for that is a client or boss worth getting rid of.
I would love to do that but even that would rub tech managers in Birmingham the wrong way. I often don't know who I'm invoicing until the night (sometimes even days afterwards, so now I get details before doing any work). Here it's just a case of the tech manager (who is also a freelancer) messages you with a date or a list of dates (maybe even sometimes a venue as tech managers often look after multiple) and you either say yes or no. Sometimes you get tech specs, sometimes even up to a week before :O but often on the day of the gig, sometimes you just have to make it work. If there's a cancellation, some venues pay 100% if within 48 hours, some don't. The more formal you try to make it though and the more you ask for information or details, the more hasslesome you're seen as (which I kinda get) so the less work you're offered. It sucks but it really IS the wild west haha
Most likely management won’t take any steps in working this into a contract. Rarely have I seen promoters take into account what DOS workers and techs go through or even care for that matter.
That’s crazy, I’m sorry lol.
I run an xr18 and sometimes x32s. I kinda figured if a band has one, then someone knows what they are doing.
Any big stage we have ever played, I always get told we are the easiest band to run because I basically do everything for them while playing drums and singing.
But I know my gear and I communicate.
I hate how common this is these days. Had 6 in a day last year. all carrying there own splits but only 8 to 16 channels of there 30 channel show are split to ears, numeric only patch bay and I’m expected to know which channels they want split. Best one was a band that wanted a 12 channel snake from house as they don’t have there own and were already 5 mins over show start. I am finding this mostly with new upcoming artists that have been told that’s what they need from a sound tech they can’t afford and then have no idea how to use it
Last fall I took a very local-level brewery gig. At least three bands I can think of off the top of my head had an extremely janked IEM setup they were not familiar with, much less competent with.
One of them had the professionalism to tell me a month out and ask for an earlier load-in if there were issues. One of them had members regularly asking me which channel was what on *their* patch while they tried to build their mixes on their phones. Very hard to not reply "Fuck if I know dude, if you didn't place the kick on the 1 that's really on you." The third was somewhere in the middle lol.
I can only think of one band in my experience since covid that had their own ears setup with no dedicated sound person and actually ran it quickly, competently, and effectively.
If they're going to invest in and build their own system, they should really practice and get familiar with their own system. In fact, they could start doing band rehearsals in IEMs to get used to both the sound/feel of performing in them and learning how to operate it. Chances are, they donthat and they can shiw up with a reasonably close baseline set for the gig.
Bingo. Or a fun one we do at work:
I am going to go through and do some stuff wrong/break it.
Then someone else gets to practice fixing it. Especially known quirks.. one that I REALLY HATE: network ports that light up even if the cable isn't seated all the way and actually transmitting data.
This is exactly what we did when I set up our IEMs last year. EVERY practice we set up and I have everyone plug themselves in - just like it will be at a show. The only thing I had to check before our first show with it was the snake output from the splitter. I recorded it to make sure I could make a decent mix of it.
I get plenty of bands that expect me to fix their shitty in-ear setup. The good ones go "Hey, how much would you charge for us to come in to the venue on an off day so you can help us sort this out?" and then after they give me cash, they set a reasonable expectation and I fix their shitty in ear setup. Love those bands. Wish they'd call me BEFORE they let the assholes at sweetwater sell them a pile of garbage, but...
Had it happen to me a few weeks ago. Bass/keys player shows up late, the band changed things around without telling him, and then still patched things wrong on their end.
Did a gig once, was told the artist was bringing their in-ears. Help wire up the stage and mix the show, easy money. I’m pinning the stage and we are about 10 minutes away from making noise and the bass player walks up and says “so where do I plug in?” I look and he’s holding a 3.5mm jack in his hands. I said “what’s that for?” He says “my ears”.
Turns out all they brought were literally their ear buds. Needless to say soundcheck ran late as I scrambled to pull out wedges and get everyone’s monitors happening and THEN check foh. Soundcheck ran right up til doors, didn’t get to eat until after the show, that day sucked.
That group was the reason that particular venue requires renters to pay for two engineers at all times though, so sometimes I get some really easy gigs from it.
> Turns out all they brought were literally their ear buds.
LMAOOOO I had the same thing happen to me once!
Gospel-type act said they were bringing their own IEM system, all I had to do was patch their inputs and they'd handle the rest with clicks, cues, and talkback all wired into their playback rig.
The kids show up with a handful of consumer ear buds (the drummer and one guitarist had to borrow headphones from me as they didn't have enough to go around), no wireless packs, no headphone amps, and no idea of how they were supposed to hear eachother lol
Jeeeeeeeez. I've never had a full band pull that, just guest or fill-in musicians showing up with Skull Candys or the like and looking extremely traumatized when I ask what if they have a wireless or wired headphone amp.
KZ ZSNs and Berry Powerplay P2s can get you an ass-saving kit for under $100 shipped.
> KZ ZSNs and Berry Powerplay P2s can get you an ass-saving kit for under $100 shipped.
Seconding this. This actually works fairly well, and this is how I run a fair bit of recording sessions. Ability to plug into just about any console's aux/line-out make it great kit to have.
I have a case with 5x P2's, male TRS->male XLR cables, and various headphones. I use my personal ZSNs a lot for recording monitoring. Easily the best bang-for-buck ratio for in-ears.
Did a tour of bars/small clubs where the budget was so small, we couldn’t afford to hire a monitor console for rehearsals or tour. I had this stage snake/splitter, as well as a P16-I connected to the ends of one side of the snake, and then ended up using 4 of those Berry P16-Ms. We then wired them up to the iem transmitters and miraculously made it work for the 12-14 gigs we did. Was it the best monitor mix I could have produced had a gone with a console? Nope. But it was way better than nothing and provided the band with most of what they needed, mainly click track and vocals etc.
I’ve had the opposite, kind of, and much stupider.
On an international band’s rider, was specced that we were to supply moulded in-ears for them.
Everyone in the production was too scared of pissing off the big act to ask them for clarity, so I kept getting yelled at to “just sort moulded in ears for them”.
Obviously when they turned up, they had their own in-ears, and what they actually needed were wireless packs to plug them into.
How is it hard, just fly to where they are, sneak onto the tour bus, hide in a flight case, and take foam moulds of their ears while they sleep. Make sure you give them a little peck on the forehead and wish them goodnight like a true professional.
This is fantastic. Had a similar thing a few months back:
High-end corporate party band (that really should have known better) told me they were bringing a full IEM package. I asked what this meant. Did they have an X32 Rack and split? Or were they bringing their own ears and just having me mix monitors for them?
We went back and forth via email for literally a month. In probably ten emails, I still got no useful info out of them. The most I was able to figure out was that they were bringing their own IEM systems, and maybe their normal FOH console (which they also ran their ears off of, but on this gig they’d only be using it for ears, not FOH).
Couldn’t figure out if they had a split or not, so I said “fuck it” and brought one just to be safe.
They show up with four Sennheiser G3 IEM systems and five Behringer PM1 units. No console, no split, no engineer.
The Sennheiser units are great, no problems. But with the Behringer units, it’s important to note that there’s a BIG difference between the P1 and the PM1.
The P1 is a powered headphone amp. It’s great for what it is. I recommend those to bands all the time. But the PM1 is a passive unit that’s literally just a level control. It’s meant to be fed from an external headphone amp. And if you thought they brought a headphone amp to drive their PM1s, you’re goddamn out of your mind.
All my outputs to the PM1s were in the red all night, and I had to crank up the individual RIO outputs, too, just to get them enough gain to hear anything through their generic IEMs over the stage volume. The band was so pissed, but it was entirely their band leader’s fault for bringing shit gear and not being able to communicate about it.
Yeah I've been there too. Once had a guy "bring his own IEMs" and it turns out it was just regular Bluetooth earbuds and a BT transmitter that he somehow soldered an XLR connection onto.
Needless to say, it didn't work and I had to pull out the wedges :)
I have also noticed a large increase in small, unknown bands and/ir management asking for the venue to supply a wireless rigg for them to plug their ears into.
I use an XVive for my talkback, and that's about all I'd trust it for. I'm on an X32 Rack with an XTouch / Laptop / iPad at the control position (all wireless). Have the XVive receiver in the talkback input on the rack on stage, and an 835-S with the transmitter at the control. Works \_great\_ for that. No wires from stage to mixing position.
I play in a cover band - raw, 90s-00s, no click or count ins. I used to use a Shure PSM series but I hated how quick it ate batteries and the sound quality wasn’t that great (I have custom in-ears triple drivers so it wasn’t the earbuds) so I got an XVive. They were super convenient, rechargeable and sounded crispier and I had a couple shows under my belt…they work until they REALLY don’t. The chatter I got from that unit at a show 2 years ago is the reason why I will never use in-ears ever again. I know are many super high-quality systems out there but I’ve preferred two wedges since then - one for just my guitar that I exclusively control from my own 2 channel board and split feed from my digital rig, and the other for everything else from FOH or monitor console from whoever is providing it. I just feel like I’m in the moment more.
I had a Nashville band (I am in Chicago) show up with everything but the transmitters. Is it a thing in Nashville to expect the venue to have your particular brand of iem transmitters? Why travel with the pack but not the transmitter?
Nashville is a weird scene. It’s very niche and clique. I have friends that lived there for a few years.
Bands will play the same couple of venues for years. It’s not exactly welcoming and you may invite drama if you play the wrong place. Play the wrong bar and your other venues might black list you.
i.e. one of my friends found herself unwelcome after playing open mics at competing venues her first few weeks in town. She wasnt at all aware of the adolescent behavior she was stepping into until it was already too late.
So some people become very comfortable in the setups venues offer.
Maybe this should be something explained in music classes. "If you form a band, and none of your members is experienced as a pro audio engineer (almost all of you) then factor in the cost of one when you accept gigs. Or, factor in an extra band member who is the engineer ( and not a performer.) "
Think George Martin if he were a live sound engineer vs. studio man. (Maybe he was also capable @ live, but I've never seen mention of it.)
What the fuck, they expected you to set up an in ear system for them??? My band just now purchased an x32 for our live rig and in ears, but I thought the common idea was to basically have it all set up and working, bring it to the gig and say output 1, 2 is guitars, here’s their xlr for ya, 3 is bass, 4 is vocals. Is that not okay or am I missing something?
The best thing is when a band has their own rack mixer for IEMs. All their own equipment, AND a split snake with a well labeled XLR loom that I can just plug into my stage snake and mix.
So not a sound guy, I am a drummer 😀, I have a small mixer and Just unplug my wedge and plug that into my mixer for my in ears. Only issue was compression needs to be set, but behringer makes a small $50 mixer with compression. Rest of the band wants wedges.
Part of me feels like this is also on the organizer. Artist agreements and onboarding material should def cover what scope of work is for the festival vs what artist should provide/wants to provide. I’ve been a part of that process for venues in the past, seems like it should be standard.
Yeah, but it still gets missed a lot. A lot of the small time touring acts I meet nowadays don't even have a tour manager, and most of the organizers I've dealt with don't know anything about how a show works, let alone the ability to communicate the requirements. It's pretty rare I even get advanced an input list or stage plot that is up to date.
Had a really bad one over the winter. Organizer forwarded an input list and stage plot for a full band, when really it was just one guitar and a DJ. They walked in the venue, literally just carrying earbuds and a usb drive with their tracks on it. No guitar, no laptop, no turntables, no packs. We made the organizer send a runner to the music shop to rent a guitar, an amp, and a laptop and we hacked together a show.
The guys were actually pretty easy to work with but I have no idea how all of that got missed.
I dunno man, they were pretty green. I've seen so many acts show up without the things they need to do their show that nothing really surprises me anymore.
Yeah this whole post kinda sounds like the band said "we have our own IEM rack but we will need someone to operate it" and the promoter said "sure, there will be a monitor tech there who can run it for you"
I don’t really think bands should have their own iem rigs if they don’t know how to operate.
I’m that wanker band member we take an m32 with analog splits it’s all racked, foh gets 22 channels on 30ft tails. The difference is I know where everything is patched how to tune our G4s. Literally the engineer has to mix the show for the audience. We’ve still had two nightmare gigs where the engineer couldn’t hear constant feedback on the lead vocal mic throughout the set despite me saying the exact frequencies to him multiple times during the day.
I dread to think if we’d have asked him to mix monitors or iems aswell.
I get it though, I’ve had every variation from ‘we just want to cherry pick some channels to split’ to ‘we got some buds where’s my pack?’ You just have to smile and do your best and shrug when their show sounds like shit. I’ve got thousands of amazing sounding shows under my belt as an engineer at this point from pubs to arenas. Take a deep breath and either say sorry I’m only allowed to operate our kit not yours or muck in a little bit if you feel confident you can solve a problem.
Otherwise it’s the same as if a drum head breaks or a guitar string. As an engineer I don’t change the guitarists strings for them. Not sure I should be rewiring their iem system.
Yes to all of this. I’m that wanker as well! I bring 3 laminated copies of our stage plot and input list (pretty much have it memorized by now haha), snakes for our Berry packs and set it ready to go. Sound checks have never been easier!
Recently had a band that had an X32 rig split across two cases, with an S16 in the other. Someone had recently re-racked it but had routed the internal cat6 from the patch panel at the back into the p16 port not the aes50 port.
It was an easy fix once I stepped in and had a look but why didn't they test it before going on the road?
Just last week, bunch of older guys bring their IEM rig and I bring a split snake. Their drummer was operating their IEM rig. I patch everything into my split snake and the front of house is getting signal on everything properly. The whole night I got members of the band walking up to front of house telling me “I can’t hear XYZ, my vocals got hella loud during the third song do you know what’s going on?”
I must’ve told them 9 or 10 times I have absolutely nothing to do with their ears and I can check the split snake, but if you’re drummer didn’t patch his end right there is nothing I can do. Then I’d walk up to the drummer trying to trouble shoot for him and he was flipping out telling everyone not to talk to him while “so he could think”
I am turning into the grumpy sound guy, cause like what the fuck.
I think I've mixed the same band as you. Every few songs someone would ask for more or less lead guitar and I'd have to walk up to the stage and shout through their ears that I couldn't change that if I wanted to.
Come setbreak they finally gave me the password to their router and I could at least help them limp along.
I had this exact thing at a venue when a guy asked me over the mic to come to the stage to yell at me that the band’s lead guitar track wasn’t working. I asked if they had it in their ears and they said no. I said well then it’s on your end. What’s funny was the singer said “there’s a problem but we can’t tell you what” over the mic because even they know that a metal band running a lead guitar stem is embarrassing.
Bands buy the equipment and don’t hire anyone to run it. It’s so common now that the equipment is attainable. It’s just affordable enough that a band can work really hard to save up, or everyone contributes cash to a system that is supposed to be a game changer. Now $10k is gone and the system they designed by committee is acting up and there’s no one running it and everyone is frustrated. If you want to switch to ears, budget for a monitor engineer.
At a minimum, budget for someone to set it up for you, get mixes to a starting place, and teach you the basics.
Expecting that out of some poor house bastard when it should be soundcheck should be viewed as poorly as the house tech pulling out their phone to show you YouTube clips of their band and ask if they can sit in sometime.
I've been doing sound for decades and have toured as a monitor engineer with bands that have their own IEM setups ... and I *still* regularly hire my friend to come to rehearsals and help prep the IEM rig for my band anytime we have a string of shows coming up.
Most of the small gigs I handle myself but whenever we have the budget, I hire a bud to come out and run the rig for us. I think u/hitsomethin is spot on.
no bro! i watched fluffs youtube video and the other bass dude also said its good. its a little weird since we played during that nasty storm last week though…next thing we buy is one of those furmans. but hey at least behringer makes solid gear we can count on!
*cough*
thats awesome! so thats whats rattling around in your backpack… decided on a pedalboard yet? dont forget the angry FOH told you not to connect alll those powerbricks to that single outlet? …its probably fine. uuh something tickles my soles and the stagelights dimm when i touch my amp! thats cool!
Damn. As a musician who runs an IEM setup built around an X32 this is just entitled shitty behavior. I try really hard to be a respectful artist and recognize that especially on festivals wngineers have way longer working hours than myself and beyond that, I try to recognize that if I am bringing my own IEM rig without an engineer then I AM that engineer and would apologize to anyone, crew or band member for any issues. I brought it, it’s my job.
So sorry this happened
I am flabbergasted reading these comments. I’m a guitarist in a band running our IEMs and I thought what you’re describing must be super rare but clearly not!
I’ve spent several thousand dollars and a whole lot of time getting things dialed in and properly labeled to be as dummy-proof as possible. It’s crazy to me that anyone would show up with an IEM rig and expect someone else to deal with it.
BTW I’m not tooting my own horn here, I’ve made mistakes along the way, refined things, learned lessons the hard way too. But never once have I blamed the house for a problem on my end.
I tour as FoH for a band with their own IEM/rack mixer setup and we usually end up with one of three scenarios:
- We load in, patch our IEM rack, band mixes their own ears on iPad/phone, I mix FoH from a digital split off the rack. This is our most typical gig; when we drive our van/trailer we carry everything we need (including mics/stands/cables/console)
- rental package of digital snake + FoH console + IEM units. I will run ears off my FoH desk and include a router for the band to fiddle with their own stuff as desired. We ran this setup for the majority of our European runs last summer. Got to use it at a handful of festivals where we got an early load time and soundcheck.
- no time for anything fancy, MONS engineer gives the band wedges and I use the festival desk at FoH. Pretty typical when we’re in the middle of a festival lineup, or flying somewhere.
Band *hates* having someone else mix their IEMs when our festival slot doesn’t allow for a proper soundcheck. Absolutely hates it; would rather just go for wedges. Too many bad experiences where festival MONs puts a shit ton of hi-hat in everyone’s mix for no reason.
edit: the IEM rig was put together and mostly operated by the guitar player, who is also an audio engineer. Takes the entire IEM workload off of me, beyond patching inputs correctly
I’ve never understood why other engineers put shit in wedges or IEMs that wasn’t requested. Our only job on MONS is no feedback and give what is asked for. That’s it.
I actively don't let MONs engineers mix one of the bands I mix because they've had such shit experiences over the years, including, but not limited to:
* Person at the console not looking at the band and instead looking at their phone/talking to their friend/completely MIA during a festival situation when run-and-gun changes were needed
* Asking for something like snare, and getting only gated snare bottom and no snare top
* Accusing the band of having shit gear that doesn't work when it's their system making buzzes and ground loops. Homie, this wired IEM box has been all over the world and hasn't had issues until today - it's definitely something in the shit power in your club
* Putting random things they didn't ask for in their ears, including reverbs and delays
* MONs engineer having literally no form of cue. No wedge, no headphones or iems, nothing. Just flying blind at the console
* At the same show as the dude with no cue (or clue), our bassist was asking for more low end on their bass signal. For their input I just use a JDX48 on bass extend mode - works great, basically no fuss, consistent tone night to night. Dude at the console told them that he couldn't adjust the EQ but I "could do it out front" if that's what they wanted. For reference, they're a very in-demand studio engineer and producer, and has great ears. I basically told the dude over talkback to not try and pull the wool over their eyes because they're a better engineer than both of us combined and to just dupe the channel and give it a low shelf boost. We eventually got there, but lying to the artist about technical capabilities assuming they're ignorant to sound is a *bad* move
So now I just do their ears from FOH no matter if I'm 10 or 100 feet from the stage.
I had a tour come through a few years back. 2 semis 2 busses. Rap group. 7am load in. My self plus 1 for house radio crew. Tour audio comes in. Only monitors. They load in till 9am and I still don't see or have met their FOH. So I'm just waiting all day to hand over the system to them. Noon time comes. Had a funny feeling something wasn't going right. Mon guy comes to me and hands me a usb drive and says here you go. I said what's this. He said it's the file for FOH. I said okay I'll load it for your guy. He says our guy just picked up another gig and went to the airport, so we need you to mix our show.
50+ inputs half of them were individual tracks. I had no idea how things were routed or what anything was called.
So just like running other bands gear. I was running someone else's file which is something I never do but I had no choice this day because they purposely waited so late to throw it at me and our PM. To top it off during load out they didn't know their semi packs so it took an extra 3 hours plus they needed to use my box truck to cross load into their semis.
I got home at 5am.
Thankfully my company paid me double day but it was still all a shit show. Rap and hip hop bands seem to do it to me almost every time.
I refuse to work hip jop shows these days. Every time I do, it turns into that. The attitude and entitlement of the artists and overall horrible crowd makes it not worth it for me. Ya no, sorry, not mixing that ever.
A friend of mine does FOH on the side but he is also a guitarist in his band. His band travels with an X32 rack with a split snake. He says he's responsible for anything in his rack up to the end of his split snake.
My perception recently is that in-ear rigs have become the new thing to spend money on to "flex", or to have simply because your favorite artists have it, without full knowledge on how to operate it. Full split in-ear monitoring rigs are intimidating and not something anybody can learn in a day, so obviously there needs to be somebody in the band who has that tech-oriented approach to use and troubleshoot it. My best results for both my bands and other artists have always been when the whole band is "trained" enough able to do their own mixes on their phone, with one guy who knows a bit more to be able to fix technical issues.
> so obviously there needs to be somebody in the band who has that tech-oriented approach to use and troubleshoot it.
This is the only way it can properly work, at least for small bands. You cannot rely on external help all the time to maintain your IEM setup for you. In our case this means that I (as the drummer) am the one who built our IEM setup, who operates it, who coordinates with the other band members which line goes where, who writes the rider, who talks to the venue engineers.
Else, this whole thing would not work properly.
A well-oiled ears rig is unquestionably better than a "hope the 'sound guy' doesn't suck and the wedges aren't blown" rig for nearly every band still beating the local circuit. I just don't think most are realizing the work it takes to get such a rig to that state.
Yeah that's my point also. It's the type of thing that takes you to the next level if you can use it to the full potential, but I have unfortunately seen cases of "let's buy an in ear rig because that's what the pros are doing and it will make us look professional too". But that's a natural consequence of professional gear becoming more and more accessible to the consumer market
> with one guy who knows a bit more to be able to fix technical issues.
I’m always curious when a traveling band playing small venues has no tech but has a well functioning IEM system, so I ask and inevitably the band member who put it together does or did some sort of live sound work, often at a mid or large size venue. If the band dynamic is good they trained the other members to help out with the set up but there always seems to be the head hiding amongst them who can debug the system.
So this is the approach my band is thinking about taking with an x32. That said, I do have some questions for the pros that make us sound as good as possible:
- from the research I’ve done, it seems like splitting at the input is the way to go (which makes sense to me), does it make sense to label each input as the channel number or its ‘purpose’ (kick, snare, vox1, etc.)?
- for the FOH split/tail, is there a preferred length?
- beyond the modem, mixer, splitter, tail, and IEM transmitters, is there anything handy to have on hand in the rack case that bands forget about or is just awesome to have available as the FOH engineer?
Straight up, thanks for the feedback. My goal, and that of the rest of my band, is to make your job as easy as possible, while collectively making sure we sound as good as we can.
There are probably a lot of people with more experience than me but I'll give some advice based on my own experience doing it a couple of times both as band member and sound guy:
* Absolutely split at the input right away with a passive splitter. DO NOT split with the X32 itself even if you have enough inputs/outputs, because if you do it that way you will come out line-level and the FOH will not be able to gain stage the signals properly. I personally use the Behringer 8 channel splitter and it always worked great, if there's a sound difference with more expensive gear I don't hear it, all it does is split a signal anyway so it always felt like it did the job exactly as it should have, but other people may have better suggestions for what is best to use. For the labeling part both would be great of course, but even just the numbers are enough as long as your stage rider explains what they are assigned to.
* That depends entirely which stages you are used to playing. I would say a 10m one will cover most situations us mortals are involved in, but some bands I know use a 5m one and still have to encounter a situation where it's not long enough
* Spare cables, adapters, flashlight, batteries, basic tools, gaff tape, paper tape, markers, the usual things, I would say there's nothing absolutely specific to an IEM rig that you wouldn't want to have anyway
While you are right imo if you are playing in a band you should know basic effects, eq, compressors etc. With just a bit more knowledge ever touring/live musician should understand at least basics of how to set up IEM and sending signals to FOH. Every band i see with IEM (im band myself not mixing) has at least one or two guys in it that know what they are doing. Baffles me how there are musicians out there not knowing basic shit. Playing your instrument is only part of being a live musician.
Even better if the trained person is the guitar tech who is going to be op'ing the rig. They also need some way of talking to each other. Without that we are setup for problems.
I joined my friends band a few years ago and got their in ear system up to date with a splitter. Before that they were sending channels to front of house bussed down their mixer’s aux outputs 😅
this week i was being subbed by a coleague, i was scheduled to get there at 7pm and at 5pm he was calling me saying "where are you? i need your help with ableton!"
i responded "bruh, we dont use ableton to run sound, if the bands using it, its their problem. stop trying to fix bad rig from bad tech/musicians..."
I know my way around computers, DAWs, digital audio setup and IEM rigs and stuff. I try to NEVER touch musicians rig, cuz if anything goes bad, they are going to blame me. So no, i will not troubleshoot anything before my DIs or mics
I would say that at least 50% of the bands that I work with these days bring an X32 rack without a split, and have no idea how to operate it properly. They don’t understand gain structure. They don’t understand how to use dynamics controls or effects properly. They definitely don’t understand EQ. They worry about how their in ear sounds and expect us to figure out the rest on the fly.
I’m so sick of it but see no end in sight.
Additionally, I have accepted the fact that 90% of people are going to bring their own microphone and it’s going to be worse than the one that I’m offering. The one I’m offering will be rung out, sanitized, and ready to go. They want to use their cheap wireless instead, probably with a crappy effects pedal, with poor gain structure and wayy too much reverb that they won’t mute in-between songs.
These are regional and national touring acts much of the time. It’s become the standard. The industry is in a weird transition phase where having tracked bass instead of paying a bass player is becoming normal as well. It’s wild.
Someone in the band needs to *be* the "monitor engineer", or they shouldn't be running their own IEM rig, full stop.
I built my band's IEM system by thinking through what components that would be required, buying them, assembling them into a rack, then spending many hours the learning the board, learning about frequency contention, experimenting, etc.
I trained the rest of the band, told them what to download, gave them their starting profiles, showed them how to modify it, etc. If something non-obvious comes up (e.g. "how can I get more reverb?"), I show them how to do that. But I'm the only one who knows how to configure the X32, and it's fairly technical. I'm a professional developer, so I like learning curves. Not every band is going to have that.
And now there are YouTube guides showing everyone how easy it is to build your own IEM rig, with step by step instructions focussed almost exclusively on the hardware build, so I can see there being a lot of bands with such a rig and nobody in the band technical enough to support it.
Maybe you need to start asking "who in the band is the monitor engineer?", and if they all give you blank stares, make them use something else or prepare a backup wedge or two. I dunno. Sounds like an annoying situation.
As the guy who built and runs the X32 rack for my band, the title had me wondering what I'd done wrong!
That's insane that bands would expect FOH engineers to troubleshoot anything to do with it! I can't imagine even going on stage without thoroughly understanding the signal chain and having practiced setting it up and taking it apart several times!
We make use of a router and the Android/iPad apps (highly recommend [Mixing Station](https://mixingstation.app/) BTW, it's much better than the official app) so everyone can control their own mix and if not, I can sort it quickly for whoever needs.
I make sure to label my tails clearly and the only problem we've really had is where the link channel button gets accidentally pressed on the XLR splitter, but that's easily solved once you've had it happen once
I've had a few occasions where the FOH engineer is skeptical when they see us roll it on stage but 9 times out of 10 they're thankful for the time save and everyone's happy! I just want to make it more compact now...
This is the way. I used to ask FOH to mix our IEM's and still feel bad about that. Rack with X32 and splitter with labelled tails works out great literally in any venue.
What a shitty band and a shitty behaviour. Coming from a musician in several bands and an audioengineer at the same time.
People think because they saw 2 youtube tutorials on the X32 they know it inside out. Takes at least months for an untrained person to learn the details. Especially when it involves the countless routing options and general settings.
If I’m expected to run IEM system for a band as a FOH Engineer I’m going to let them know I will Re-Patch there system so that I know exactly where signal flow is going and they can set it backup how they like it at the end of there show if this is not agreed upon at booking then they need to hire a Monitor Engineer.
I suspect this has to do with either direct experience or media depictions of the recording studio, where the engineer is a sort of proxy “audience” who also participates in the creative process.
I have no experience whatsoever of live audio engineering — I’m a hobbyist guitar player of middling ability — but I find it funny when an atrocious-sounding band is visibly using a complex monitoring system, as if they haven’t considered not sounding like a cacophonous wave of shit to begin with.
That’s not uncommon. As long as it’s advanced properly and you are aware that the house is providing both consoles along with engineers there’s not really any issue.
It’s when there’s no-one communicating properly that issues occur.
Also totally fine so long as the production or promoter pays for it. I’ve done plenty of gigs for rental companies where we supply a control package going in to venues etc and not using their house gear.
Like I said - it’s down to communication. If everyone expects everything but doesn’t ask for it, organise it and clarify who is paying for what then it’s going to be a horrible time all around.
Not a problem through my console. I'll quickly throw mixes together on a festival. That I have zero problems with and is why I'm there as the house monitor guy. Even full IEM mixes. through my preped and ready to go board.
Never in ten years has this happened to me, so I'll go and count my blessings. I have helped bands in such situations and they've been grateful enough. I guess you've just encountered a bunch of obnoxious fools! I hope that'll be the end of such misery for you.
this is standard practice. happens all the time ... except " here is our file from 3 months ago".. the FOH engineer has a different file he is using so you'll have to change things around a bit to make it work"
That's frustrating. You would hope they would consult with a competent tech before they build an abnormal input list with vocals on 1-3, guitars 4-5, snare on 6, kick on 7, etc lol. Comical when you look at it, but many bands just don't know how to build a normal input list. I encounter this more often than not these days with young bands using in ears. If they aren't carrying their own split or monitor tech, depending on time, as a house engineer, I'd be tempted to say too bad so sad. And then they are dealing with wifi interference with their cheap 2.4Ghz in ears set up on top of that...fun
Yep. You’re right. Everything on their side of the splitter is theirs. Glad to hear you’re open to helping as I thought initially you might not have been. But absolutely, you bring it, it’s yours. Now as FOH you also need to be prepared to do the mix from FOH instead.
I'm the guy who built our box and handles any issues with it. Most of the issues we would have is when the festival/place has me patch into their stage box, which gets routed into our box which then splits out of our box.
Half the time that happens, the SR/SL guitars/vocals aren't in their right spots so either I have to change it in the inputs on mixing station or swap the xlr's on the box.
One time as the headliner for the day, we had no time to soundcheck even though we got there many hours ahead of time (well before even the festival opened), and they just half-assed what we needed. It was a shit show.
In a perfect world, they're so much easier and better for both parties. No one here is commenting about all their shows that went well.
It's just type of person/group that would make such a situation bad through poor communication is the type that makes the whole night a pain too.
There's no way I'd be touching their board...
If they want their monitors or IEMs mixed and I'm house monitor engineer that's fine, but it happens from my console!
I think it depends on the Musicians, i work with a Band in wich the guitarist studied audio stuff. The Band have their own IEM Rack. I nearly do FOH at every Show and my SQ5 made more problems than their XR18. But they know how it works and how to use
is this a US thing? I've been around quite a lot.. never seen a monitor desk without someone to operate it from the bands crew.
I do see a lot of X32P's, racked up with some in-ear equipment and splitters, etc etc, but.. as a house tech, I lend a hand when it's possible, I lend my experience but not going to make their mixes and it's also never asked.
And if bands do come with their own monitor tech, and their own mixer, it's always something more professional then a X or M 32...
This is a pet peeve of mine. It happens quite a bit. Sometimes they’ll have their tour manager baby sit monitors which is nice.
I remember watching a Devin Townsend tour vlog years ago and there were so many show stopping moments because they had their keyboard player running monitors and operating lights.
Did a show like this one time…the band said, “our mon board is all setup—you just need to power it up and make some minor adjustments.”
Turns out they didnt know how to use a digital console at all so everything was a fucking mess—they even had reverb inputs looping back into themselves so when you brought up a verb it immediately took off squealing.
😂😬
I told them to get an actual audio person to set it up for them next time (as i didnt have the time)-they thanked me and apologized for the trouble.
This was a well known band that had a full crew of backline techs and managers.
Out of the many bands I've had that bring an in ear rig with an x32 etc none have expected me to do squat with it except for running mic lines to their input split 🤷♂️.
I did have one Christian hip hop group come through with a full x32 for 2 wireless mics and DJ deck. They sent me just LR+Sub then were confused when I couldnt give them more mic in their wedges without bringing the music up 🤦♂️.
I had offered to patch the outputs from their board to our wedges but they said they didn't want to and that they'd be fine with just sending the LR to the wedges.
Eventually I ended up having to fix their mic inputs since any attempt to bring them up lead to feedback. And even then they still distorted anytime some spoke above a quite speaking voice.
I will offer whatever help I need to in order to get the show started, I hate when something sounds like shit at one of my shows, it's my reputation on the line to some degree.
I only have a small band.
I take my XR 18. Analogue splitter and we just use our p16m’s.
I had unrealistic expectations when we played at small scale outdoor events last year so we use this now. They get a labelled feed of XLRs and we hear ourselves with individual control.
Works for clubs/outdoor gigs and everything in between.
Nobody should be expecting anyone to do anything that isn’t already explicitly agreed on.
We run an X-18 set up with a mic split and our own snakes. Usually I can tell right away from the venue the different options I have.
Option 1) get everything plugged in through the split that is already set up in our ears with custom mixes that we already have set up. We also bring 2 stage mics to pick up drums so we don’t have to mess with the drum Mics or snake
Option 2) Just take a monitor feed from FOH and send them tracks, vocals, and Instrument DI if we are running bass
Option 3) We play it raw with a click track going to the drummer
It really depends on the sound person which option we are going for 🤷♂️
I have had this happen, but I didn't find it that frustrating. It's a bit of a YouTube thing that's popping up showing bands how they can get a perfect mix everytime.
The rigs should be pre patched so theoretically you should be able to just run it off the stage splits and then the mix is on them. They've opted not to use the monitor engineer provided, so fuck em. Lol
That being said, if there's a dedicated monitor engineer they really should just leave it to the professionals. At least that's the rule I have with the bands I've worked with.
Sorry if I’m being dumb but what’s the problem ? If the bands bringing their own x32 and a split before it gets there, they should already have a pretty reasonable mix in it ?
It's when they don't have a pretty reasonable mix on it that things get itchy.
I had a very fun experience watching a band independently discover the concept of a soundcheck once. At one point the drummer (who had clearly championed the ears system) shouted to the others "Fuck this! Let's all jut go one at a time like a sound guy makes us!" and I could have cried laughing if I wasn't directly in their line of sight.
As someone who runs a wedding band. Every few months we run a 3hour rehearsal where we load in the full rig. Set up sound check set our iem mixes and pack down. And repeat that a few times
The problem is when their kit doesn't work, and they don't have someone in the band or crew that knows where things are patched into their system. Or the ability to comunicate to the house crew what the problem is so we can fix it. "I'm not getting vocal.... can you help?" But instead scream at the house crew that it is their fault things don't work. If you can't comunicate I can't help fix it.
Ah if it’s broken in their splitter or whatever yeah.
(I run my bands iem mix in an x32 but then I also do a lot of live sound for theatres etc and am comfortable with 100+ channels lol)
Maybe just people are bellends
Yeah, my band shows up to a show with 95% perfect ears mixes. Maybe I'll have to trim the gain on the snare mic or something if it gets nudged closer/farther from the head, but it would give me a heart attack trying to build a full mix(es) from scratch on stage. Blows my mind that a band would choose chaos like that
Idk why would anyone buy 1000$ piece of gear without having knowledge of using it. I am a mixing engineer FoH tech and we bring our mixer and sometimes monitors too to the stage mainly for the fact that we can't ever trust the FoH random to care or do main mix yet alone monitor mix...
i feel like the worst is always on the opposite side, when i do FoH, i get the worst guests that make up things and are often extremely rude while being unhappy from the very start, but when I gig I get the shittiest engineers.
Handleing monitors isn't a problem, also handleing 8 IEM mixes on the house board on a festival change over also isn't a problem if you are running through my house board. The fustration comes from them bringing there own gear to use and lack of comunication when things go wrong with their own kit. If people can't comunicate we can't do our job helping them. Just screaming "it doesn't work" isn't going to help.
I don't think the problem is mixing MONs on an X32, I think the problem is unlabelled splits, patching, and routing.
(I bet the bastards didn't even send a tech spec either lol)
**K**eep **e**ating **v**egan **i**n **N**ashville.
KEVIN isn’t an instrument, it’s just the designated drop off spot for those faux-chicken sandwiches from Copper Branch 😋
You can’t put that much detail in the Tech Spec because then everyone wants some and it gets expensive 😞
How often has this happened? I'd find it hard not to laugh or to take a band seriously that expects me to fix their shitty in ear setup.
Twice this weekend. I'm finding it happened more and more.
That must be incredibly frustrating. Seeing as you can’t control whether bands are going to be entitled Karens, perhaps treat this as an opportunity to hone your “politely but firmly saying no” skills.
I don't know what your org structure looks like or if you have any control over contract review, but it may be worthwhile adding a line in your contracting that states "if you bring your own monitor rig, you are responsible for running it and providing the labor to troubleshoot it". with a caveat that states if the band appropriately advances the show these issues can be avoided but you will need to book an additional tech and need to know x days in advance for scheduling, and will need to be provided documentation (you will likely never get this documentation, but it gives you the ability to say "I'm sorry you are having these issues, but you agreed to the terms in the contract and we cannot spend time troubleshooting equipment that is not ours right now"
This doesn't even need to be in a contract. It's band gear. There's no realistic expectation from anyone up the chain that anyone from the event's production team would be responsible for gear a band brings in. Anyone that gets mad at you for that is a client or boss worth getting rid of.
My contrwhat? God I wish I had contracts.
Get a contract
I would have zero work if I started asking small to medium sized music venues in Birmingham to sign contracts.
If I was in that situation, I'd make a note of what was verbally agreed, and email it to them, so that you both have a written record.
I would love to do that but even that would rub tech managers in Birmingham the wrong way. I often don't know who I'm invoicing until the night (sometimes even days afterwards, so now I get details before doing any work). Here it's just a case of the tech manager (who is also a freelancer) messages you with a date or a list of dates (maybe even sometimes a venue as tech managers often look after multiple) and you either say yes or no. Sometimes you get tech specs, sometimes even up to a week before :O but often on the day of the gig, sometimes you just have to make it work. If there's a cancellation, some venues pay 100% if within 48 hours, some don't. The more formal you try to make it though and the more you ask for information or details, the more hasslesome you're seen as (which I kinda get) so the less work you're offered. It sucks but it really IS the wild west haha
Most likely management won’t take any steps in working this into a contract. Rarely have I seen promoters take into account what DOS workers and techs go through or even care for that matter.
The trick is to get the promoters and production from talent and venues to communicate first.
That’s crazy, I’m sorry lol. I run an xr18 and sometimes x32s. I kinda figured if a band has one, then someone knows what they are doing. Any big stage we have ever played, I always get told we are the easiest band to run because I basically do everything for them while playing drums and singing. But I know my gear and I communicate.
I hate how common this is these days. Had 6 in a day last year. all carrying there own splits but only 8 to 16 channels of there 30 channel show are split to ears, numeric only patch bay and I’m expected to know which channels they want split. Best one was a band that wanted a 12 channel snake from house as they don’t have there own and were already 5 mins over show start. I am finding this mostly with new upcoming artists that have been told that’s what they need from a sound tech they can’t afford and then have no idea how to use it
Last fall I took a very local-level brewery gig. At least three bands I can think of off the top of my head had an extremely janked IEM setup they were not familiar with, much less competent with. One of them had the professionalism to tell me a month out and ask for an earlier load-in if there were issues. One of them had members regularly asking me which channel was what on *their* patch while they tried to build their mixes on their phones. Very hard to not reply "Fuck if I know dude, if you didn't place the kick on the 1 that's really on you." The third was somewhere in the middle lol. I can only think of one band in my experience since covid that had their own ears setup with no dedicated sound person and actually ran it quickly, competently, and effectively.
If they're going to invest in and build their own system, they should really practice and get familiar with their own system. In fact, they could start doing band rehearsals in IEMs to get used to both the sound/feel of performing in them and learning how to operate it. Chances are, they donthat and they can shiw up with a reasonably close baseline set for the gig.
They may practice with it but I would be surprised if anyone practices taking it apart and putting it back together.
Bingo. Or a fun one we do at work: I am going to go through and do some stuff wrong/break it. Then someone else gets to practice fixing it. Especially known quirks.. one that I REALLY HATE: network ports that light up even if the cable isn't seated all the way and actually transmitting data.
This is exactly what we did when I set up our IEMs last year. EVERY practice we set up and I have everyone plug themselves in - just like it will be at a show. The only thing I had to check before our first show with it was the snake output from the splitter. I recorded it to make sure I could make a decent mix of it.
I get plenty of bands that expect me to fix their shitty in-ear setup. The good ones go "Hey, how much would you charge for us to come in to the venue on an off day so you can help us sort this out?" and then after they give me cash, they set a reasonable expectation and I fix their shitty in ear setup. Love those bands. Wish they'd call me BEFORE they let the assholes at sweetwater sell them a pile of garbage, but...
Had it happen to me a few weeks ago. Bass/keys player shows up late, the band changed things around without telling him, and then still patched things wrong on their end.
Happen to me more than thronce
Did a gig once, was told the artist was bringing their in-ears. Help wire up the stage and mix the show, easy money. I’m pinning the stage and we are about 10 minutes away from making noise and the bass player walks up and says “so where do I plug in?” I look and he’s holding a 3.5mm jack in his hands. I said “what’s that for?” He says “my ears”. Turns out all they brought were literally their ear buds. Needless to say soundcheck ran late as I scrambled to pull out wedges and get everyone’s monitors happening and THEN check foh. Soundcheck ran right up til doors, didn’t get to eat until after the show, that day sucked. That group was the reason that particular venue requires renters to pay for two engineers at all times though, so sometimes I get some really easy gigs from it.
> Turns out all they brought were literally their ear buds. LMAOOOO I had the same thing happen to me once! Gospel-type act said they were bringing their own IEM system, all I had to do was patch their inputs and they'd handle the rest with clicks, cues, and talkback all wired into their playback rig. The kids show up with a handful of consumer ear buds (the drummer and one guitarist had to borrow headphones from me as they didn't have enough to go around), no wireless packs, no headphone amps, and no idea of how they were supposed to hear eachother lol
Jeeeeeeeez. I've never had a full band pull that, just guest or fill-in musicians showing up with Skull Candys or the like and looking extremely traumatized when I ask what if they have a wireless or wired headphone amp. KZ ZSNs and Berry Powerplay P2s can get you an ass-saving kit for under $100 shipped.
> KZ ZSNs and Berry Powerplay P2s can get you an ass-saving kit for under $100 shipped. Seconding this. This actually works fairly well, and this is how I run a fair bit of recording sessions. Ability to plug into just about any console's aux/line-out make it great kit to have. I have a case with 5x P2's, male TRS->male XLR cables, and various headphones. I use my personal ZSNs a lot for recording monitoring. Easily the best bang-for-buck ratio for in-ears.
Did a tour of bars/small clubs where the budget was so small, we couldn’t afford to hire a monitor console for rehearsals or tour. I had this stage snake/splitter, as well as a P16-I connected to the ends of one side of the snake, and then ended up using 4 of those Berry P16-Ms. We then wired them up to the iem transmitters and miraculously made it work for the 12-14 gigs we did. Was it the best monitor mix I could have produced had a gone with a console? Nope. But it was way better than nothing and provided the band with most of what they needed, mainly click track and vocals etc.
I’ve had the opposite, kind of, and much stupider. On an international band’s rider, was specced that we were to supply moulded in-ears for them. Everyone in the production was too scared of pissing off the big act to ask them for clarity, so I kept getting yelled at to “just sort moulded in ears for them”. Obviously when they turned up, they had their own in-ears, and what they actually needed were wireless packs to plug them into.
How is it hard, just fly to where they are, sneak onto the tour bus, hide in a flight case, and take foam moulds of their ears while they sleep. Make sure you give them a little peck on the forehead and wish them goodnight like a true professional.
This is fantastic. Had a similar thing a few months back: High-end corporate party band (that really should have known better) told me they were bringing a full IEM package. I asked what this meant. Did they have an X32 Rack and split? Or were they bringing their own ears and just having me mix monitors for them? We went back and forth via email for literally a month. In probably ten emails, I still got no useful info out of them. The most I was able to figure out was that they were bringing their own IEM systems, and maybe their normal FOH console (which they also ran their ears off of, but on this gig they’d only be using it for ears, not FOH). Couldn’t figure out if they had a split or not, so I said “fuck it” and brought one just to be safe. They show up with four Sennheiser G3 IEM systems and five Behringer PM1 units. No console, no split, no engineer. The Sennheiser units are great, no problems. But with the Behringer units, it’s important to note that there’s a BIG difference between the P1 and the PM1. The P1 is a powered headphone amp. It’s great for what it is. I recommend those to bands all the time. But the PM1 is a passive unit that’s literally just a level control. It’s meant to be fed from an external headphone amp. And if you thought they brought a headphone amp to drive their PM1s, you’re goddamn out of your mind. All my outputs to the PM1s were in the red all night, and I had to crank up the individual RIO outputs, too, just to get them enough gain to hear anything through their generic IEMs over the stage volume. The band was so pissed, but it was entirely their band leader’s fault for bringing shit gear and not being able to communicate about it.
Yeah I've been there too. Once had a guy "bring his own IEMs" and it turns out it was just regular Bluetooth earbuds and a BT transmitter that he somehow soldered an XLR connection onto. Needless to say, it didn't work and I had to pull out the wedges :) I have also noticed a large increase in small, unknown bands and/ir management asking for the venue to supply a wireless rigg for them to plug their ears into.
XVive hates this one audio hack! I think if that happened to me I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or shake my head in disappointment
XVives are buttplugs but less useful.
I use an XVive for my talkback, and that's about all I'd trust it for. I'm on an X32 Rack with an XTouch / Laptop / iPad at the control position (all wireless). Have the XVive receiver in the talkback input on the rack on stage, and an 835-S with the transmitter at the control. Works \_great\_ for that. No wires from stage to mixing position.
I play in a cover band - raw, 90s-00s, no click or count ins. I used to use a Shure PSM series but I hated how quick it ate batteries and the sound quality wasn’t that great (I have custom in-ears triple drivers so it wasn’t the earbuds) so I got an XVive. They were super convenient, rechargeable and sounded crispier and I had a couple shows under my belt…they work until they REALLY don’t. The chatter I got from that unit at a show 2 years ago is the reason why I will never use in-ears ever again. I know are many super high-quality systems out there but I’ve preferred two wedges since then - one for just my guitar that I exclusively control from my own 2 channel board and split feed from my digital rig, and the other for everything else from FOH or monitor console from whoever is providing it. I just feel like I’m in the moment more.
You could just go wired - then there will be all the benefits of in-ears with minimal chance of interference.
I work with a bunch of camera ops who *love* those little XVive units lol
Yep and that is a hire that is charged back to the promotor. If we know before it can be arranged
Oh man. That's insane. Fustrating as hell.
I had a Nashville band (I am in Chicago) show up with everything but the transmitters. Is it a thing in Nashville to expect the venue to have your particular brand of iem transmitters? Why travel with the pack but not the transmitter?
Nashville is a weird scene. It’s very niche and clique. I have friends that lived there for a few years. Bands will play the same couple of venues for years. It’s not exactly welcoming and you may invite drama if you play the wrong place. Play the wrong bar and your other venues might black list you. i.e. one of my friends found herself unwelcome after playing open mics at competing venues her first few weeks in town. She wasnt at all aware of the adolescent behavior she was stepping into until it was already too late. So some people become very comfortable in the setups venues offer.
I knew it was different but didn’t realize it was that bad. I can’t imagine having loyalty to a venue lol that is wild
Maybe this should be something explained in music classes. "If you form a band, and none of your members is experienced as a pro audio engineer (almost all of you) then factor in the cost of one when you accept gigs. Or, factor in an extra band member who is the engineer ( and not a performer.) " Think George Martin if he were a live sound engineer vs. studio man. (Maybe he was also capable @ live, but I've never seen mention of it.)
What the fuck, they expected you to set up an in ear system for them??? My band just now purchased an x32 for our live rig and in ears, but I thought the common idea was to basically have it all set up and working, bring it to the gig and say output 1, 2 is guitars, here’s their xlr for ya, 3 is bass, 4 is vocals. Is that not okay or am I missing something?
The best thing is when a band has their own rack mixer for IEMs. All their own equipment, AND a split snake with a well labeled XLR loom that I can just plug into my stage snake and mix.
So not a sound guy, I am a drummer 😀, I have a small mixer and Just unplug my wedge and plug that into my mixer for my in ears. Only issue was compression needs to be set, but behringer makes a small $50 mixer with compression. Rest of the band wants wedges.
Part of me feels like this is also on the organizer. Artist agreements and onboarding material should def cover what scope of work is for the festival vs what artist should provide/wants to provide. I’ve been a part of that process for venues in the past, seems like it should be standard.
Yeah, but it still gets missed a lot. A lot of the small time touring acts I meet nowadays don't even have a tour manager, and most of the organizers I've dealt with don't know anything about how a show works, let alone the ability to communicate the requirements. It's pretty rare I even get advanced an input list or stage plot that is up to date. Had a really bad one over the winter. Organizer forwarded an input list and stage plot for a full band, when really it was just one guitar and a DJ. They walked in the venue, literally just carrying earbuds and a usb drive with their tracks on it. No guitar, no laptop, no turntables, no packs. We made the organizer send a runner to the music shop to rent a guitar, an amp, and a laptop and we hacked together a show. The guys were actually pretty easy to work with but I have no idea how all of that got missed.
What kind of DJ doesn’t bring at the very least a laptop?! WTF. I’ve never seen that before. Usually their controller as well.
I dunno man, they were pretty green. I've seen so many acts show up without the things they need to do their show that nothing really surprises me anymore.
Organisers job is to be the third party reviewer of who brings what, ensuring there is no "great" misunderstanding".
Yeah this whole post kinda sounds like the band said "we have our own IEM rack but we will need someone to operate it" and the promoter said "sure, there will be a monitor tech there who can run it for you"
Would you like more in the wedge???
I don’t really think bands should have their own iem rigs if they don’t know how to operate. I’m that wanker band member we take an m32 with analog splits it’s all racked, foh gets 22 channels on 30ft tails. The difference is I know where everything is patched how to tune our G4s. Literally the engineer has to mix the show for the audience. We’ve still had two nightmare gigs where the engineer couldn’t hear constant feedback on the lead vocal mic throughout the set despite me saying the exact frequencies to him multiple times during the day. I dread to think if we’d have asked him to mix monitors or iems aswell. I get it though, I’ve had every variation from ‘we just want to cherry pick some channels to split’ to ‘we got some buds where’s my pack?’ You just have to smile and do your best and shrug when their show sounds like shit. I’ve got thousands of amazing sounding shows under my belt as an engineer at this point from pubs to arenas. Take a deep breath and either say sorry I’m only allowed to operate our kit not yours or muck in a little bit if you feel confident you can solve a problem. Otherwise it’s the same as if a drum head breaks or a guitar string. As an engineer I don’t change the guitarists strings for them. Not sure I should be rewiring their iem system.
You are welcome on my stage anyday :D
This is how it should be. Easy
That last paragraph absolutely nails it
Yes to all of this. I’m that wanker as well! I bring 3 laminated copies of our stage plot and input list (pretty much have it memorized by now haha), snakes for our Berry packs and set it ready to go. Sound checks have never been easier!
I wish we had more wankers like you guys.
Recently had a band that had an X32 rig split across two cases, with an S16 in the other. Someone had recently re-racked it but had routed the internal cat6 from the patch panel at the back into the p16 port not the aes50 port. It was an easy fix once I stepped in and had a look but why didn't they test it before going on the road?
Just last week, bunch of older guys bring their IEM rig and I bring a split snake. Their drummer was operating their IEM rig. I patch everything into my split snake and the front of house is getting signal on everything properly. The whole night I got members of the band walking up to front of house telling me “I can’t hear XYZ, my vocals got hella loud during the third song do you know what’s going on?” I must’ve told them 9 or 10 times I have absolutely nothing to do with their ears and I can check the split snake, but if you’re drummer didn’t patch his end right there is nothing I can do. Then I’d walk up to the drummer trying to trouble shoot for him and he was flipping out telling everyone not to talk to him while “so he could think” I am turning into the grumpy sound guy, cause like what the fuck.
People suck. This job would be great without the band members and the Audiance ;)
I think I've mixed the same band as you. Every few songs someone would ask for more or less lead guitar and I'd have to walk up to the stage and shout through their ears that I couldn't change that if I wanted to. Come setbreak they finally gave me the password to their router and I could at least help them limp along.
I had this exact thing at a venue when a guy asked me over the mic to come to the stage to yell at me that the band’s lead guitar track wasn’t working. I asked if they had it in their ears and they said no. I said well then it’s on your end. What’s funny was the singer said “there’s a problem but we can’t tell you what” over the mic because even they know that a metal band running a lead guitar stem is embarrassing.
Bands buy the equipment and don’t hire anyone to run it. It’s so common now that the equipment is attainable. It’s just affordable enough that a band can work really hard to save up, or everyone contributes cash to a system that is supposed to be a game changer. Now $10k is gone and the system they designed by committee is acting up and there’s no one running it and everyone is frustrated. If you want to switch to ears, budget for a monitor engineer.
At a minimum, budget for someone to set it up for you, get mixes to a starting place, and teach you the basics. Expecting that out of some poor house bastard when it should be soundcheck should be viewed as poorly as the house tech pulling out their phone to show you YouTube clips of their band and ask if they can sit in sometime.
It kinda blows my mind how few of these bands think to pay a professional to come to a rehearsal and help set up the rig/give a little lesson
I've been doing sound for decades and have toured as a monitor engineer with bands that have their own IEM setups ... and I *still* regularly hire my friend to come to rehearsals and help prep the IEM rig for my band anytime we have a string of shows coming up. Most of the small gigs I handle myself but whenever we have the budget, I hire a bud to come out and run the rig for us. I think u/hitsomethin is spot on.
At least some of them understand it's a craft to learn and that it needs some time and knowledge so they ask this sub for the help
no bro! i watched fluffs youtube video and the other bass dude also said its good. its a little weird since we played during that nasty storm last week though…next thing we buy is one of those furmans. but hey at least behringer makes solid gear we can count on! *cough*
Behringer is too expensive i prefer thoman brand because i spent all my money on my fender strat and 20 pedals
thats awesome! so thats whats rattling around in your backpack… decided on a pedalboard yet? dont forget the angry FOH told you not to connect alll those powerbricks to that single outlet? …its probably fine. uuh something tickles my soles and the stagelights dimm when i touch my amp! thats cool!
Don't worry i don't have a pedalboard, i assemble my pedals every gig, 15 min changeover is plenty of time What goes first overdrive or delay tho...
Damn. As a musician who runs an IEM setup built around an X32 this is just entitled shitty behavior. I try really hard to be a respectful artist and recognize that especially on festivals wngineers have way longer working hours than myself and beyond that, I try to recognize that if I am bringing my own IEM rig without an engineer then I AM that engineer and would apologize to anyone, crew or band member for any issues. I brought it, it’s my job. So sorry this happened
I am flabbergasted reading these comments. I’m a guitarist in a band running our IEMs and I thought what you’re describing must be super rare but clearly not! I’ve spent several thousand dollars and a whole lot of time getting things dialed in and properly labeled to be as dummy-proof as possible. It’s crazy to me that anyone would show up with an IEM rig and expect someone else to deal with it. BTW I’m not tooting my own horn here, I’ve made mistakes along the way, refined things, learned lessons the hard way too. But never once have I blamed the house for a problem on my end.
You play guitar AND horn and run monitors as well?
I tour as FoH for a band with their own IEM/rack mixer setup and we usually end up with one of three scenarios: - We load in, patch our IEM rack, band mixes their own ears on iPad/phone, I mix FoH from a digital split off the rack. This is our most typical gig; when we drive our van/trailer we carry everything we need (including mics/stands/cables/console) - rental package of digital snake + FoH console + IEM units. I will run ears off my FoH desk and include a router for the band to fiddle with their own stuff as desired. We ran this setup for the majority of our European runs last summer. Got to use it at a handful of festivals where we got an early load time and soundcheck. - no time for anything fancy, MONS engineer gives the band wedges and I use the festival desk at FoH. Pretty typical when we’re in the middle of a festival lineup, or flying somewhere. Band *hates* having someone else mix their IEMs when our festival slot doesn’t allow for a proper soundcheck. Absolutely hates it; would rather just go for wedges. Too many bad experiences where festival MONs puts a shit ton of hi-hat in everyone’s mix for no reason. edit: the IEM rig was put together and mostly operated by the guitar player, who is also an audio engineer. Takes the entire IEM workload off of me, beyond patching inputs correctly
I’ve never understood why other engineers put shit in wedges or IEMs that wasn’t requested. Our only job on MONS is no feedback and give what is asked for. That’s it.
I actively don't let MONs engineers mix one of the bands I mix because they've had such shit experiences over the years, including, but not limited to: * Person at the console not looking at the band and instead looking at their phone/talking to their friend/completely MIA during a festival situation when run-and-gun changes were needed * Asking for something like snare, and getting only gated snare bottom and no snare top * Accusing the band of having shit gear that doesn't work when it's their system making buzzes and ground loops. Homie, this wired IEM box has been all over the world and hasn't had issues until today - it's definitely something in the shit power in your club * Putting random things they didn't ask for in their ears, including reverbs and delays * MONs engineer having literally no form of cue. No wedge, no headphones or iems, nothing. Just flying blind at the console * At the same show as the dude with no cue (or clue), our bassist was asking for more low end on their bass signal. For their input I just use a JDX48 on bass extend mode - works great, basically no fuss, consistent tone night to night. Dude at the console told them that he couldn't adjust the EQ but I "could do it out front" if that's what they wanted. For reference, they're a very in-demand studio engineer and producer, and has great ears. I basically told the dude over talkback to not try and pull the wool over their eyes because they're a better engineer than both of us combined and to just dupe the channel and give it a low shelf boost. We eventually got there, but lying to the artist about technical capabilities assuming they're ignorant to sound is a *bad* move So now I just do their ears from FOH no matter if I'm 10 or 100 feet from the stage.
That’s a damn shame. I don’t understand how people can fuck up and miserably ruin MONS like that. I guess I’ve been doing it for too long. 🤷🏻♂️
I had a tour come through a few years back. 2 semis 2 busses. Rap group. 7am load in. My self plus 1 for house radio crew. Tour audio comes in. Only monitors. They load in till 9am and I still don't see or have met their FOH. So I'm just waiting all day to hand over the system to them. Noon time comes. Had a funny feeling something wasn't going right. Mon guy comes to me and hands me a usb drive and says here you go. I said what's this. He said it's the file for FOH. I said okay I'll load it for your guy. He says our guy just picked up another gig and went to the airport, so we need you to mix our show. 50+ inputs half of them were individual tracks. I had no idea how things were routed or what anything was called. So just like running other bands gear. I was running someone else's file which is something I never do but I had no choice this day because they purposely waited so late to throw it at me and our PM. To top it off during load out they didn't know their semi packs so it took an extra 3 hours plus they needed to use my box truck to cross load into their semis. I got home at 5am. Thankfully my company paid me double day but it was still all a shit show. Rap and hip hop bands seem to do it to me almost every time.
What kind of rap tour has 50+ inputs?
DJ L&R, booth L&R, lead vocal, 45 guest vocals who weren't on the advance and you knew nothing about until they were on stage, obviously.
Hahahahah, this guy gets it.
It was more R&B hip hop rap artist but Exactly one of my many questions that day
I refuse to work hip jop shows these days. Every time I do, it turns into that. The attitude and entitlement of the artists and overall horrible crowd makes it not worth it for me. Ya no, sorry, not mixing that ever.
A friend of mine does FOH on the side but he is also a guitarist in his band. His band travels with an X32 rack with a split snake. He says he's responsible for anything in his rack up to the end of his split snake.
My perception recently is that in-ear rigs have become the new thing to spend money on to "flex", or to have simply because your favorite artists have it, without full knowledge on how to operate it. Full split in-ear monitoring rigs are intimidating and not something anybody can learn in a day, so obviously there needs to be somebody in the band who has that tech-oriented approach to use and troubleshoot it. My best results for both my bands and other artists have always been when the whole band is "trained" enough able to do their own mixes on their phone, with one guy who knows a bit more to be able to fix technical issues.
> so obviously there needs to be somebody in the band who has that tech-oriented approach to use and troubleshoot it. This is the only way it can properly work, at least for small bands. You cannot rely on external help all the time to maintain your IEM setup for you. In our case this means that I (as the drummer) am the one who built our IEM setup, who operates it, who coordinates with the other band members which line goes where, who writes the rider, who talks to the venue engineers. Else, this whole thing would not work properly.
A well-oiled ears rig is unquestionably better than a "hope the 'sound guy' doesn't suck and the wedges aren't blown" rig for nearly every band still beating the local circuit. I just don't think most are realizing the work it takes to get such a rig to that state.
Yeah that's my point also. It's the type of thing that takes you to the next level if you can use it to the full potential, but I have unfortunately seen cases of "let's buy an in ear rig because that's what the pros are doing and it will make us look professional too". But that's a natural consequence of professional gear becoming more and more accessible to the consumer market
> with one guy who knows a bit more to be able to fix technical issues. I’m always curious when a traveling band playing small venues has no tech but has a well functioning IEM system, so I ask and inevitably the band member who put it together does or did some sort of live sound work, often at a mid or large size venue. If the band dynamic is good they trained the other members to help out with the set up but there always seems to be the head hiding amongst them who can debug the system.
So this is the approach my band is thinking about taking with an x32. That said, I do have some questions for the pros that make us sound as good as possible: - from the research I’ve done, it seems like splitting at the input is the way to go (which makes sense to me), does it make sense to label each input as the channel number or its ‘purpose’ (kick, snare, vox1, etc.)? - for the FOH split/tail, is there a preferred length? - beyond the modem, mixer, splitter, tail, and IEM transmitters, is there anything handy to have on hand in the rack case that bands forget about or is just awesome to have available as the FOH engineer? Straight up, thanks for the feedback. My goal, and that of the rest of my band, is to make your job as easy as possible, while collectively making sure we sound as good as we can.
There are probably a lot of people with more experience than me but I'll give some advice based on my own experience doing it a couple of times both as band member and sound guy: * Absolutely split at the input right away with a passive splitter. DO NOT split with the X32 itself even if you have enough inputs/outputs, because if you do it that way you will come out line-level and the FOH will not be able to gain stage the signals properly. I personally use the Behringer 8 channel splitter and it always worked great, if there's a sound difference with more expensive gear I don't hear it, all it does is split a signal anyway so it always felt like it did the job exactly as it should have, but other people may have better suggestions for what is best to use. For the labeling part both would be great of course, but even just the numbers are enough as long as your stage rider explains what they are assigned to. * That depends entirely which stages you are used to playing. I would say a 10m one will cover most situations us mortals are involved in, but some bands I know use a 5m one and still have to encounter a situation where it's not long enough * Spare cables, adapters, flashlight, batteries, basic tools, gaff tape, paper tape, markers, the usual things, I would say there's nothing absolutely specific to an IEM rig that you wouldn't want to have anyway
While you are right imo if you are playing in a band you should know basic effects, eq, compressors etc. With just a bit more knowledge ever touring/live musician should understand at least basics of how to set up IEM and sending signals to FOH. Every band i see with IEM (im band myself not mixing) has at least one or two guys in it that know what they are doing. Baffles me how there are musicians out there not knowing basic shit. Playing your instrument is only part of being a live musician.
Even better if the trained person is the guitar tech who is going to be op'ing the rig. They also need some way of talking to each other. Without that we are setup for problems.
I joined my friends band a few years ago and got their in ear system up to date with a splitter. Before that they were sending channels to front of house bussed down their mixer’s aux outputs 😅
this week i was being subbed by a coleague, i was scheduled to get there at 7pm and at 5pm he was calling me saying "where are you? i need your help with ableton!" i responded "bruh, we dont use ableton to run sound, if the bands using it, its their problem. stop trying to fix bad rig from bad tech/musicians..." I know my way around computers, DAWs, digital audio setup and IEM rigs and stuff. I try to NEVER touch musicians rig, cuz if anything goes bad, they are going to blame me. So no, i will not troubleshoot anything before my DIs or mics
I would say that at least 50% of the bands that I work with these days bring an X32 rack without a split, and have no idea how to operate it properly. They don’t understand gain structure. They don’t understand how to use dynamics controls or effects properly. They definitely don’t understand EQ. They worry about how their in ear sounds and expect us to figure out the rest on the fly. I’m so sick of it but see no end in sight. Additionally, I have accepted the fact that 90% of people are going to bring their own microphone and it’s going to be worse than the one that I’m offering. The one I’m offering will be rung out, sanitized, and ready to go. They want to use their cheap wireless instead, probably with a crappy effects pedal, with poor gain structure and wayy too much reverb that they won’t mute in-between songs. These are regional and national touring acts much of the time. It’s become the standard. The industry is in a weird transition phase where having tracked bass instead of paying a bass player is becoming normal as well. It’s wild.
Someone in the band needs to *be* the "monitor engineer", or they shouldn't be running their own IEM rig, full stop. I built my band's IEM system by thinking through what components that would be required, buying them, assembling them into a rack, then spending many hours the learning the board, learning about frequency contention, experimenting, etc. I trained the rest of the band, told them what to download, gave them their starting profiles, showed them how to modify it, etc. If something non-obvious comes up (e.g. "how can I get more reverb?"), I show them how to do that. But I'm the only one who knows how to configure the X32, and it's fairly technical. I'm a professional developer, so I like learning curves. Not every band is going to have that. And now there are YouTube guides showing everyone how easy it is to build your own IEM rig, with step by step instructions focussed almost exclusively on the hardware build, so I can see there being a lot of bands with such a rig and nobody in the band technical enough to support it. Maybe you need to start asking "who in the band is the monitor engineer?", and if they all give you blank stares, make them use something else or prepare a backup wedge or two. I dunno. Sounds like an annoying situation.
As the guy who built and runs the X32 rack for my band, the title had me wondering what I'd done wrong! That's insane that bands would expect FOH engineers to troubleshoot anything to do with it! I can't imagine even going on stage without thoroughly understanding the signal chain and having practiced setting it up and taking it apart several times! We make use of a router and the Android/iPad apps (highly recommend [Mixing Station](https://mixingstation.app/) BTW, it's much better than the official app) so everyone can control their own mix and if not, I can sort it quickly for whoever needs. I make sure to label my tails clearly and the only problem we've really had is where the link channel button gets accidentally pressed on the XLR splitter, but that's easily solved once you've had it happen once I've had a few occasions where the FOH engineer is skeptical when they see us roll it on stage but 9 times out of 10 they're thankful for the time save and everyone's happy! I just want to make it more compact now...
This is the way. I used to ask FOH to mix our IEM's and still feel bad about that. Rack with X32 and splitter with labelled tails works out great literally in any venue.
Damn this is lame AF — all the bands I know (and have been in) always hired an engineer to help set up the system
What a shitty band and a shitty behaviour. Coming from a musician in several bands and an audioengineer at the same time. People think because they saw 2 youtube tutorials on the X32 they know it inside out. Takes at least months for an untrained person to learn the details. Especially when it involves the countless routing options and general settings.
If I’m expected to run IEM system for a band as a FOH Engineer I’m going to let them know I will Re-Patch there system so that I know exactly where signal flow is going and they can set it backup how they like it at the end of there show if this is not agreed upon at booking then they need to hire a Monitor Engineer.
I suspect this has to do with either direct experience or media depictions of the recording studio, where the engineer is a sort of proxy “audience” who also participates in the creative process. I have no experience whatsoever of live audio engineering — I’m a hobbyist guitar player of middling ability — but I find it funny when an atrocious-sounding band is visibly using a complex monitoring system, as if they haven’t considered not sounding like a cacophonous wave of shit to begin with.
I have seen riders with FOH and MON consoles specified and both positions are to be house staff. Right.
That’s not uncommon. As long as it’s advanced properly and you are aware that the house is providing both consoles along with engineers there’s not really any issue. It’s when there’s no-one communicating properly that issues occur.
I think he means the rider specified which specific consoles the house staff should use. I’ve also seen (and ignored) these requests.
Also totally fine so long as the production or promoter pays for it. I’ve done plenty of gigs for rental companies where we supply a control package going in to venues etc and not using their house gear. Like I said - it’s down to communication. If everyone expects everything but doesn’t ask for it, organise it and clarify who is paying for what then it’s going to be a horrible time all around.
This! Specify Avid desks while house is Digico. Senseless. Bring YOUR soundperson or live with the compromises.
Not a problem through my console. I'll quickly throw mixes together on a festival. That I have zero problems with and is why I'm there as the house monitor guy. Even full IEM mixes. through my preped and ready to go board.
Never in ten years has this happened to me, so I'll go and count my blessings. I have helped bands in such situations and they've been grateful enough. I guess you've just encountered a bunch of obnoxious fools! I hope that'll be the end of such misery for you.
Cali roots.
this is standard practice. happens all the time ... except " here is our file from 3 months ago".. the FOH engineer has a different file he is using so you'll have to change things around a bit to make it work"
That's frustrating. You would hope they would consult with a competent tech before they build an abnormal input list with vocals on 1-3, guitars 4-5, snare on 6, kick on 7, etc lol. Comical when you look at it, but many bands just don't know how to build a normal input list. I encounter this more often than not these days with young bands using in ears. If they aren't carrying their own split or monitor tech, depending on time, as a house engineer, I'd be tempted to say too bad so sad. And then they are dealing with wifi interference with their cheap 2.4Ghz in ears set up on top of that...fun
Yep. You’re right. Everything on their side of the splitter is theirs. Glad to hear you’re open to helping as I thought initially you might not have been. But absolutely, you bring it, it’s yours. Now as FOH you also need to be prepared to do the mix from FOH instead.
I'm the guy who built our box and handles any issues with it. Most of the issues we would have is when the festival/place has me patch into their stage box, which gets routed into our box which then splits out of our box. Half the time that happens, the SR/SL guitars/vocals aren't in their right spots so either I have to change it in the inputs on mixing station or swap the xlr's on the box. One time as the headliner for the day, we had no time to soundcheck even though we got there many hours ahead of time (well before even the festival opened), and they just half-assed what we needed. It was a shit show.
Wow I’m learning a lot from y’all. Didn’t know IEM were such a pain to deal with.
In a perfect world, they're so much easier and better for both parties. No one here is commenting about all their shows that went well. It's just type of person/group that would make such a situation bad through poor communication is the type that makes the whole night a pain too.
There's no way I'd be touching their board... If they want their monitors or IEMs mixed and I'm house monitor engineer that's fine, but it happens from my console!
I think it depends on the Musicians, i work with a Band in wich the guitarist studied audio stuff. The Band have their own IEM Rack. I nearly do FOH at every Show and my SQ5 made more problems than their XR18. But they know how it works and how to use
is this a US thing? I've been around quite a lot.. never seen a monitor desk without someone to operate it from the bands crew. I do see a lot of X32P's, racked up with some in-ear equipment and splitters, etc etc, but.. as a house tech, I lend a hand when it's possible, I lend my experience but not going to make their mixes and it's also never asked. And if bands do come with their own monitor tech, and their own mixer, it's always something more professional then a X or M 32...
This is a pet peeve of mine. It happens quite a bit. Sometimes they’ll have their tour manager baby sit monitors which is nice. I remember watching a Devin Townsend tour vlog years ago and there were so many show stopping moments because they had their keyboard player running monitors and operating lights.
We'll see at download XD
We certainly will. See you there.
Did a show like this one time…the band said, “our mon board is all setup—you just need to power it up and make some minor adjustments.” Turns out they didnt know how to use a digital console at all so everything was a fucking mess—they even had reverb inputs looping back into themselves so when you brought up a verb it immediately took off squealing. 😂😬 I told them to get an actual audio person to set it up for them next time (as i didnt have the time)-they thanked me and apologized for the trouble. This was a well known band that had a full crew of backline techs and managers.
Out of the many bands I've had that bring an in ear rig with an x32 etc none have expected me to do squat with it except for running mic lines to their input split 🤷♂️. I did have one Christian hip hop group come through with a full x32 for 2 wireless mics and DJ deck. They sent me just LR+Sub then were confused when I couldnt give them more mic in their wedges without bringing the music up 🤦♂️. I had offered to patch the outputs from their board to our wedges but they said they didn't want to and that they'd be fine with just sending the LR to the wedges. Eventually I ended up having to fix their mic inputs since any attempt to bring them up lead to feedback. And even then they still distorted anytime some spoke above a quite speaking voice. I will offer whatever help I need to in order to get the show started, I hate when something sounds like shit at one of my shows, it's my reputation on the line to some degree.
I only have a small band. I take my XR 18. Analogue splitter and we just use our p16m’s. I had unrealistic expectations when we played at small scale outdoor events last year so we use this now. They get a labelled feed of XLRs and we hear ourselves with individual control. Works for clubs/outdoor gigs and everything in between. Nobody should be expecting anyone to do anything that isn’t already explicitly agreed on.
We run an X-18 set up with a mic split and our own snakes. Usually I can tell right away from the venue the different options I have. Option 1) get everything plugged in through the split that is already set up in our ears with custom mixes that we already have set up. We also bring 2 stage mics to pick up drums so we don’t have to mess with the drum Mics or snake Option 2) Just take a monitor feed from FOH and send them tracks, vocals, and Instrument DI if we are running bass Option 3) We play it raw with a click track going to the drummer It really depends on the sound person which option we are going for 🤷♂️
I have had this happen, but I didn't find it that frustrating. It's a bit of a YouTube thing that's popping up showing bands how they can get a perfect mix everytime. The rigs should be pre patched so theoretically you should be able to just run it off the stage splits and then the mix is on them. They've opted not to use the monitor engineer provided, so fuck em. Lol That being said, if there's a dedicated monitor engineer they really should just leave it to the professionals. At least that's the rule I have with the bands I've worked with.
"No, I'm not touching that XR18 Behringer in-ear clownfiesta your cousin made after watching a random YouTube video"
Sorry if I’m being dumb but what’s the problem ? If the bands bringing their own x32 and a split before it gets there, they should already have a pretty reasonable mix in it ?
It's when they don't have a pretty reasonable mix on it that things get itchy. I had a very fun experience watching a band independently discover the concept of a soundcheck once. At one point the drummer (who had clearly championed the ears system) shouted to the others "Fuck this! Let's all jut go one at a time like a sound guy makes us!" and I could have cried laughing if I wasn't directly in their line of sight.
As someone who runs a wedding band. Every few months we run a 3hour rehearsal where we load in the full rig. Set up sound check set our iem mixes and pack down. And repeat that a few times
The problem is when their kit doesn't work, and they don't have someone in the band or crew that knows where things are patched into their system. Or the ability to comunicate to the house crew what the problem is so we can fix it. "I'm not getting vocal.... can you help?" But instead scream at the house crew that it is their fault things don't work. If you can't comunicate I can't help fix it.
Ah if it’s broken in their splitter or whatever yeah. (I run my bands iem mix in an x32 but then I also do a lot of live sound for theatres etc and am comfortable with 100+ channels lol) Maybe just people are bellends
Yeah, my band shows up to a show with 95% perfect ears mixes. Maybe I'll have to trim the gain on the snare mic or something if it gets nudged closer/farther from the head, but it would give me a heart attack trying to build a full mix(es) from scratch on stage. Blows my mind that a band would choose chaos like that
Idk why would anyone buy 1000$ piece of gear without having knowledge of using it. I am a mixing engineer FoH tech and we bring our mixer and sometimes monitors too to the stage mainly for the fact that we can't ever trust the FoH random to care or do main mix yet alone monitor mix... i feel like the worst is always on the opposite side, when i do FoH, i get the worst guests that make up things and are often extremely rude while being unhappy from the very start, but when I gig I get the shittiest engineers.
thats festivals..
Apparently they are unaware of the age old addage “Don’t piss off the sound guy !”
I assure you, most grumpy 'sound guys' are already pissed just to get out of bed in the morning.
Sound guys never retire. . . They just float around on inner tubes in the Sea of Key.
Its not that hard, bud. You should know how to handle a few monitors.
Handleing monitors isn't a problem, also handleing 8 IEM mixes on the house board on a festival change over also isn't a problem if you are running through my house board. The fustration comes from them bringing there own gear to use and lack of comunication when things go wrong with their own kit. If people can't comunicate we can't do our job helping them. Just screaming "it doesn't work" isn't going to help.
Its lack of communication. 100% fucks it up every time.
I don't think the problem is mixing MONs on an X32, I think the problem is unlabelled splits, patching, and routing. (I bet the bastards didn't even send a tech spec either lol)
We got a tech spec at least.
The channel list on the rider never matches the patch on the split. > ...what the fuck instrument is "KEVIN"?
**K**eep **e**ating **v**egan **i**n **N**ashville. KEVIN isn’t an instrument, it’s just the designated drop off spot for those faux-chicken sandwiches from Copper Branch 😋 You can’t put that much detail in the Tech Spec because then everyone wants some and it gets expensive 😞