While the acceptance of in-ear monitoring increases throughout the live sound industry, it remains a mystery to a large proportion of musicians who continue to use conventional on-stage wedge monitors. Mark Cunningham decides that the time is ripe for enlightenment.

Control has increasingly become the golden watchword on the lips of sound engineers involved in the higher echelons of the live music industry. No longer is it enough to simply install large and powerful PA systems in cavernous arenas and outdoor stadia; there is now a more focused push towards improved directivity of sound, lower on-stage volume levels, and distortion-free front-of-house mixes.

Where the latter is concerned, the conventional monitor wedge has traditionally posed a problem. Many an engineer has suffered frustration with loud wedge mixes, which inevitably spill into vocal and backline microphones, and thereby limit the control he has over the out-front sound. Another, more serious dilemma has thrown up doubts about stage monitoring — musicians' hearing loss. After several years spent performing on stages with sometimes horrendously loud backline amps and wedges, musicians may begin to notice a marked deterioration in the quality of their hearing, especially at the top end of the audio spectrum. These factors considered, it was inevitable that technology would eventually come to the rescue and provide an intelligent solution: in-ear monitoring.

The staggering number of artists currently on tour with in-ear monitoring (IEM) systems — David Bowie, The Eagles, U2, REM, Rod Stewart, Phil Collins, George Michael, Wet Wet Wet, Status Quo, Bryan Adams, and Peter Gabriel to name but a few — adds weight to the theory that the reign of the common wedge, particularly where large-scale concert productions are concerned, is over (lead guitarists are now having to find another mid-solo foot prop!). Several companies throughout the United States have appeared as suppliers of IEM systems, notably Nady, Futuresonics, Sensaphonics, Bill Leabody, and Circuits Maximus. However, it is the British-based company, Garwood Communications, which leads the world market with its industry-standard 'Radio Station'.

CUSTOM HEARING

Comprising stereo ear pieces, a belt-worn receiver pack, and a transmitter unit, the wireless Radio Station system is designed to dramatically reduce on-stage volume, eliminate the risk of feedback, and, for musicians in the front line, provide the freedom to wander around a stage whilst experiencing a consistent, high quality monitor mix, regardless of the environment. With a mix fed directly to the ear moulds via a UHF radio link, artists can not only focus completely on their performance, but the volume control-equipped beltpack also enables them to determine their own comfortable listening level.

The complete Radio Station package includes custom moulding of the ear monitors and an appointment with an audiologist, such as Bob Beiny of The Hearing Healthcare Practice in Harpenden, who will assess the user's hearing and check ear wax before having an impression made of the ear contours. As well as fitting ear pieces for world class artists, Beiny and his colleague Andrew Shiach take time to warn musicians and engineers of the health risks they are letting themselves in for through prolonged exposure to excessive volume. "What we want to do is make people aware of the dangers before damage occurs, because once the damage is done, there is no drug or surgery that can bring hearing back," says Beiny, who is clearly horrified by the lack of respect accorded by musicians to their own ears. "It's the exposure to high average — but not peak — SPLs over an extended amount of time that leads to problems. If you blow a speaker, you can buy another. Hearing is the most important instrument in the industry. It cannot be replaced or repaired. Every time people say hearing problems are one of the 'sacrifices' you have to make if you work in rock'n'roll, it sends shivers down my spine."

IEM as a concept was developed by sound engineer, and later Garwood's MD, Chrys Lindop in the late 1980s while working for Stevie Wonder. Working alongside partner, Martin Noar to create a practical wireless approach, the prototype Radio Station went out on the road in the USA with British band, The Outfield in 1988. Educating the industry about the benefits of this new technology was not easy, although artists including Sinead O'Connor, UB40, and Tears For Fears were quick off the mark to adopt the system by the turn of the decade. When Roger Waters took it on board for his mammoth Berlin performance of The Wall in 1990, however, it was obvious to many that it pointed the way forward for the increasing new wave of ambitious multimedia live shows, such as U2's Zoo TV and Peter Gabriel's Secret World Tour.

Noar, Garwood's Technical Director, says: "Suddenly telling people that it would be a very good idea to take away their beloved monitor speakers that they had been relying on to perform, and try out this new idea, was hard to accept. We were just a small company with a new idea and no track record to support it, and that made things very difficult. Even when engineers liked the concept, the prospect of trying to get it past a lot of musicians was pretty tough, because they get used to a certain way of working.

"Now that those early non-believers are seeing so many major acts using the system and noticing how well it has worked for them, they are realising how obvious it all is. The clever aspects are in the design, not the application. You just put the monitors in your ears and turn it on; it's simple."

ON THE ROAD

Queensryche's Monitor Engineer, Tom Abraham is one of many currently on the road to reap the significant time and labour-saving benefits of IEM. "There's no need to set up 40 wedges, fly six side fills, put up a drum fill or set up seven amp racks," he says. "That saves a lot of truck space and labour. I set up my normal console and outboard effects, along with a small transmitter rack and antennae, refresh the batteries in the receiver packs, and I'm then ready for the gig. In most venues, because the amount of equipment I use is drastically reduced, I can be packed and out of the building in 45 minutes."

To smooth out the in-ear mix, Abraham uses heavy compression across the bass, drums, and vocal channels, although he stresses that the artist does not hear this as an over-compressed signal. He also uses a BSS 31-band stereo graphic EQ to shape up the tone of the ear pieces. "There isn't that much EQ applied," he insists. "I just take out some of the sibilant frequencies that bother the ears. I give a curve boost to the high-mids, because it helps to keep the receiver pack volume lower, while still providing a defined, cutting sound. The ear pieces sound nothing like a speaker, so I monitor exactly what's coming out of the transmitter, taking my signal from the last link before it goes to the band. Each one of the band's mixes are radically different to each other, and I have a six-way box that switches between each unit so I can listen to whichever mix I want."

Touring Europe last summer as The Eagles' monitor man, Chris Lantz was running nine Radio Station systems, backed up with four spares, for use by the band and their satellite musicians, but guitarist Joe Walsh remains one of the ever-decreasing number of abstainers. Lantz said: "The band members use the ear monitors in one ear only, mainly to hear the vocals and vocal enhancements, but they are also listening to the wedges which fill out the sound. For EQ backup, I have 16 TC Electronic TC 1128 28-band graphics, but with the ear monitors, I just rely on parametric EQ from the desk. I feel I need to add some reverb and sweeten up the EQ on the ear monitors and take some of the high end out of them. I find that the combination of the one ear and the wedge is excellent, because when you use both ears, you're stuck in the same world wherever you are on stage. For some performers, that might be good, but with one ear, you can walk around the stage and feel the different pockets of sound and warmth of the speakers with your open ear as well as maintaining a balance with the ear monitor. At the beginning, I thought that would be kind of a weird experience, but in reality, it works well.

"I've worked with a lot of singers, who don't like in-ear monitors, and some of the people who do persevere will consistently back off the microphone because their voice sounds so strong in their heads, but it makes it hard-for the front-of-house engineer to get a good signal. Personally, I'm a great believer in in-ear monitoring, but it takes some time to get used to."

Bob Beiny says that it should not be expected that a musician will be able to use in-ear monitors for the first time and feel comfortable. "You need to be counselled and given explanations as to what is happening. I would always suggest an artist practise on their own at first, and then bring in the band. As the quality is far superior to wedges, we find that all levels on stage go down. You have to break yourself into that environment."

AMBIENT MIX

Listening to a monitor mix through a set of ear pieces is a similar experience to that of listening to a top quality CD on headphones. While the sound is crisp and clinical, the user may sense deprivation of contact with the audience because he feels isolated. Bryan Adams' crew found one way of combating that problem this summer by strategically placing six AKG 3000 ambience mics at the front of the stage to pick up the sound of the venue, then feed the signals into the band's in-ear mixes to give them more of a 'gig vibe'. A total of seven wireless systems were in use, including a spare set for Monitor Engineer, Glen Collett.

"Hearing is the most important instrument in the industry."

Collett prefers not to add too much EQ character to the IEM mixes but adds that he needs to work hard on 'enlarging' the sound. "The first comment people make when they begin to use IEM is normally that it sounds small, so my whole effort is about getting it to sound as big as possible without saturating the little Radio Station. It's a bit of a balancing act, but the benefits are huge."

He also says that as a direct result of the IEM approach, his input count has risen "beyond belief" to 68 which, for a six-piece band, does seem rather excessive. "They now all want cymbals, ambience, and all kinds of things you'd never put through wedges. I also end up splitting inputs and having duplicates, because people want different EQs. Before, everyone would hear the guitarist coming from his big stack. But now that I'm supplying it to them, the bass player doesn't want it as bright as the guitarist, so I have to split the input for that. But that's just the beginning. The drums that come out of the side fills sound big and fat, but I can't replicate that on the in-ears otherwise it'll cover up the rest of the mix for something else. So I split the kick, snare, and tom inputs for someone else... it goes on and on! I'm listening on in-ears as well, and I have a spare IEM wireless system that I hook up to the cue buss, so that it's always running and I can listen to what they're hearing. If one guy's goes down, I can quickly swap his mix into that spare."

Adams' man believes that the hardest-working IEM engineers will always be those in the rock music field because of the constant desire to push the boundaries of the system's dynamic range. "For artists who work at low levels, the benefits lie in the nice, big spacious sound," says Collett. "Our on-stage levels are a whole lot quieter than they ever were before, so the musicians don't get the ear fatigue that was commonplace. Rehearsals are always bad news because you're normally in a small room somewhere. They went for seven hours on the first day of rehearsals. They removed their in-ear monitors and Bryan said, 'I can't believe this, I've got no headache!' They never realised how bad it was before. So now when they come off stage, they feel as fresh as they did when they went on."

IEM has probably come along at just the right time to prevent 37 year old Adams from doing irreparable damage to his vocal chords, as Crew Chief Dean Roney observed: "It may be too early to tell, but my belief is that IEM can prolong an artist's career because by having monitors in his ears, he doesn't have to exert himself as hard vocally, so his throat may last a few more years than with wedges where he is fighting against loud on-stage volumes."

MOD CONVERSION

Rod Stewart's personal Monitor Engineer, Mick McNeil eagerly took on the responsibility of introducing 'The Mod' and his band members to the idea of IEM during rehearsals for their 1995 world tour. Most were enthusiastic, although it is to McNeil's credit that he persevered to ensure that everyone was 'on ears'. He says: "I took each member one at a time, and we demoed the ear pieces with a full stereo mix. The keyboard players were the last two holdouts and were on straight wedges for the previous tour, but on the '95 tour, they went over to the ear mix, and everybody was really happy with it. Because of the stereo imaging and the detail that you can put into a mix, it is a comfortable listening experience. On that tour, we operated 14 Radio Stations, which was the most anyone had used in the world at that time. "

For years, Del Amitri lead singer and bassist, Justin Currie repeatedly asked for his vocals to be loud on-stage, but this often led to impractical ambient stage levels. This problem was solved when he became the sole band member to use IEM.

The Dels' Monitor Engineer and Adlib Audio man, Dave Kay says: "Although the system is great for monitoring most instruments, it isn't fully capable of delivering a meaty drum sound, so he needs the wedges to 'feel' the sound better. I have my own pair of ear moulds, which I plug directly into the Radio Station so I can hear exactly what Justin is listening to. But you have to be careful not to listen at too high a volume level, otherwise the top end of your hearing just disappears. I tend to just monitor his in-ear mix for the first three songs to make sure he's getting the right mix, and then I will listen only occasionally throughout the rest of the set."

To gain further control at front of house, Adlib recently invented a pressure pad system for muting vocal microphones when the Dels are not using them. "There is a pad situated behind each backing vocal mic stand, which the singer has to stand on to gain access to the mic," explains Kay. "When he stands on it, the mic is open, but it closes as soon as he steps back. It's a very useful tool for controlling sound bleed from drums and backline amps through the monitors, especially in smaller venues, and it obviously also helps the FOH mix."

DRUMMERS' STATIONS

Having been subjected to dangerous volume levels for 25 years, Status Quo's drummer Jeff Rich had good reason to worry about the state of his hearing ability. He believes that IEM has saved him from virtual deafness. "I've had my ears tested and my left one is only working at 40% capacity because of the pounding it's taken from the hi-hat, snare, and bass cabinets which are on that side. Both ears have lost a lot of top end frequencies due to cymbals, and I was told that if I carried on playing under those conditions, I would face critical problems. So to move over to IEM was important, not only because of the sound, but also for health reasons.

"The volume of our backline has been reduced by two-thirds, and our sound engineer is over the moon because those levels are so easy to control. On our winter tour, we did five nights in a row, which we've never been able to do before because Francis's voice wouldn't have held out. When you're using monitor wedges, you tend to overcompensate, but if you can hear your vocals clearly, you can hold back a little more and it saves your voice. If you have a really good engineer, the sound you'll hear through the ear pieces is going to be better than you'd hear through normal monitors. I've never heard vocals sound as good as they do with IEM; you'd never get that quality from a wedge. It's crystal clear. When I play, I'm playing for the song, so to hear the vocals like that is a dream come true."

Drummers' concerns over the virtual absence of the normal physical sensations of drumming with IEM have persuaded many to shy away from the medium. Big Country's Mark Brzezicki is still to be persuaded to take the IEM route. "I was always put off by the idea of the sound coming from within my ears," he says, "when it's not physically away from you. In the studio, it's a fact of life that you are going to be isolated from your fellow band members. But when I play live, I want it to feel like a release and like I'm a part of what's happening on the stage. I think that by wearing ear monitors, I would feel so removed from it all. I like acoustic monitors; I like them on the floor, pointing up towards my head."

For any band that has worked with a regular monitoring system for their entire career, the changeover to the in-ear system can be a daunting prospect. Down to earth rockers Status Quo became converts in 1993, and although Jeff Rich speaks loud and clear of the health benefits, he admits that the changeover was not without frustration. "We all received our IEM systems at the same time, and we were told that either we'd all use them or none of us would. It doesn't work very well if only some band members are using them, because any monitors will inevitably spill down the mics. It was a real effort to start with, because unless you forget the sounds you heard in the past, you'll never get on with IEM.

"I've never heard vocals sound as good as they do with IEM; you'd never get that quality from a wedge. It's crystal clear."

"There were some very frustrating rehearsals to start with and I didn't think I'd cope. If there's anyone in a band who finds it a difficult transition, it's going to be the drummer. Cymbals sound very different, and it is hard to achieve their brightness of tone in your ears. We've had terrible problems with the ride cymbal because of the overtones, but you can't really gate a ride cymbal without it sounding harsh and cutting. So we've experimented with different mics and mic positions, and we've overcome a lot of the problems now to the point where I feel very comfortable. It's never going to be like playing an acoustic drum kit and you'll never achieve the same feel and beef, but the overall mix quality compensates for those minor shortcomings."

Scott Rockenfield, the drummer with Queensryche, says that his band's adoption of IEM has led to a more controlled front-of-house sound. "Now we're used to it, I don't think we'd ever want to go back to wedges. Because we're putting out less volume on stage, our front-of-house engineer can achieve better, more definable levels, and it makes for increased sound quality all round." Despite the high-tech approach to the on-stage sound, Rockenfield's powerful drumming still proved a significant obstacle on the band's recent tour. "My kit was leaking over the vocal mics, sometimes louder than the vocals themselves," he says. "So I had to be shielded off with a plexiglass cage, which provides at least 10dB reduction, as well as being a source of visual interest!"

Some drummers, like Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and Gary Wallis, compromise by wearing ear moulds and having the low frequencies of their kits sent through traditional side fill monitors to add power. But Dave Palmer, currently occupying the drum stool for Rod Stewart, appears to come up with the solution for drummers who complain long and hard about the lack of force experienced without side fills. Firstly, instead of the discreet ear moulds, Palmer wears closed cup headphones to receive his Radio Station signal, but there is, as the band's Monitor Engineer David Bryson explains, a novel added ingredient. "Dave has two of what I call buttwoofers or shakers. They are Aura solenoid drivers, mounted on the bottom of his drum stool. Each one is basically a coil and I reinforce the stereo signal through an amplifier to give the sound a lot more beef. It goes through a parametric EQ and I give it 40 cycles as the signal goes to the stool. They constantly blast his spine with the physical sensation experienced with loud side fills. He has a hard-wired, stereo ear mix, and he hears a really fat sound through his headphones."

In a similar approach to that of Dave Palmer, Bryan Adams' drummer Mickey Curry added weight to his in-ear mix by having a 'bass thumper' attached to the underside of his stool. Although a great believer in the IEM cause, Glen Collett finds that, in the rock genre at least, he needs to reinforce the IEM sound in some way. "If you're working with guys who are used to getting a feel for what they're doing from wedges, they definitely miss them if they're not there," he said. "The drummer will be used to feeling some air move around him, so we have to adopt some unusual methods. I'm only using side fills for some vibe."

Jeff Rich also found a use for his IEM system at Francis Rossi's private studio in Surrey where Quo recorded their recent Don't Stop covers album. "I now use a hard-wired system for recording, which is, of course, much cheaper than the wireless version," he says, "and you simply plug the cable, which has two XLRs, into a line-level source. I'd recommend the system to any drummer, because it's a vast improvement over headphones, which I bloody hate!" On an economic note, he adds: "Although our investment in IEM was around £32,000, it has paid for itself within a year by saving money on truck space, because our backline has been reduced and we only carry a few backup wedges."

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Although competition among IEM suppliers can hardly be described as fierce at present, Nady appears to be the only company to design a system to compete both technologically and financially with the Radio Station. Working on FM radio frequency bands, the Nady system is geared towards the low budget end of the market, while the Radio Station is now fully established as a professional tool. So much so that other US suppliers like Futuresonics buy in wireless transmitter units from Garwood to re-sell with their own ear pieces as a complete IEM package.

One of the latest developments in Garwood's IEM product has involved substantial modifications to its standard professional system, allowing even greater ease of use in the field of international touring. Yet the new Radio Station IDS is no mere upgrade — it features two serious, engineer-friendly innovations.

Due to rigid legislation and the absence of global harmonisation, frequency selection in any given country has been tight and downright confusing to say the least. In the UK, the legal operating frequencies on Channel 69 are between 854 and 862MHz; over the pond in the USA, the available frequencies range between 517 and 607MHz. The wide gulf between these extremes has given rise to the technical challenge of developing a single unit which will cover a broad range of frequencies.

Until now, engineers on world tours have carried spare modules with them to enable access of particular frequency bands, but full integral synthesised tuning was always the aim. The Radio Station IDS, however, has provided yet another solution, as Martin Noar explains: "It not only covers the full range of frequencies available in each country, from 517 up to 862MHz, but it has been arranged in bands of frequencies dependent on the country. Its foolproof LCD display allows the user to set the frequency by the country's two digit abbreviation, such as GB, US, and D for Germany."

Many artists and their engineers are now taking the subject of legislation far more seriously than ever, and this new system has been designed to remove all doubt. "Users can now remain confident that if they are being offered a frequency with Germany called up on the display, then those are frequencies which you can use legitimately in that country," comments Noar. "We will obviously be updating software and adding frequencies in the future. If Spain, for example, ever decided to change its standard frequency band, we can either send an update to those people visiting Spain or invite users to send their units back to us for re-programming."

Despite the best intentions of Garwood, the company cannot insure against misuse of the IDS. Noar says: "Of course, it is possible to land in Germany and call up a US frequency on the display, which would be illegal in Germany. It would be blatantly obvious to the user that he is using the wrong frequency in the wrong country, so if he then gets a visit from the authorities, he cannot plead ignorance. There have apparently been visits to Wembley and the NEC where people have been using the wrong frequencies. Brian Copsey of ASP has been very helpful in guiding us in the use of frequencies all over Europe and pointed out that the Radio Communications Agency does intend to police the use of the airwaves more rigidly in the future. So, although we may witness a widespread harmonisation of frequencies in the future, we believe it will be a long time coming, so we decided to take this step now."

The other major improvement Garwood has incorporated into the Radio Station IDS concerns the signal loss inherent with RE cable. Until now, the Radio Station has been equipped with a standard cable, which, because of its short three metre length, has made it difficult for monitor engineers to place the aerial in the most desirable position. Noar says: "It is possible to extend the cable, but over a 10 metre run you will experience a loss of 3dB. If you start with 50 milliwatts of transmission power from your transmitter, by the time you've got to your aerial, it is only 25 milliwatts. That power is reduced even further if you extend the cable run."

The new version of the system incorporates an active antenna, which actually combines the transmitter RE. "Instead of the standard RF cable, the unit comes with a four core cable, which carries the coded audio data along with data from the synthesiser," explains Noar. "This will operate over a 75 metre distance into your active aerial, without any signal power loss. The audio is a very low impedance balanced signal so you get good rejection of interfering signals from lighting and other cables. It means that you can put the aerial wherever it needs to go, even around modern sets which contain vast amounts of aluminium which can cause dropout problems."

Although at £3,995 the top-of-the-range Radio Station IDS may well be out of reach of all but those performing on stadium and large arena tours, the launch of a remarkable £1,349 budget system, the System 2 (the upgraded successor to the PRS II) has placed high quality IEM within the financial grasp of even college circuit bands. As one might expect, the System 2's features are inevitably different to the IDS, especially in areas such as power consumption, input metering, frequency transmission, and the ear pieces themselves (the superior package includes custom-moulded ear pieces rather than the universal, off-the-shelf IEM II moulds). For bands with smaller budgets, the hard-wired M-Pack may be more restrictive than its wireless superior, but at only £299 for the full kit, one cannot overstress the long-term benefits of moving over from the wedge to the cutting edge.

Feedback from within the theatre industry has resulted in a noise reduction system in the improved Radio Station IDS, which has virtually removed the 'breathing' effect of compansion. But the most significant in-ear monitoring development for theatre applications is the new LV-1 system — aptly nicknamed the Luwie! Although IEM had attracted the enthusiasm of theatre engineers, it was the whole size and weight issue which prevented its widespread use. Martin Noar comments: "With actors already burdened by radio microphone belt-worn packs, the last thing they need is to be weighed down by a further 220g. So, again as a result of industry suggestions, Garwood has designed a smaller bodypack (71 x 55 x 18 mm/65g), while maintaining compatibility with the whole Garwood range."

In terms of audio performance, the LV-1 (£1,125) boasts an identical specification to that of the Radio Station receiver and will also feature the Garwood EQ switch, which caters for the common desire of increasing the top end frequency. The main differences, however, are that it is a single channel and single frequency unit, compared to the Radio Station IDS multiple capabilities, and battery life is two and half hours (three and a half hours less than the Radio Station IDS).

The ex-Genesis singer/drummer was immediately impressed with the technology and benefits of IEM. In December 1994, during his last European tour, he told me:

"The sound I hear through them is so controlled. It's just like being back in my studio, and after years of being blasted with hard-sounding wedges and side fills, it feels like my ears are having a holiday!"

Conventional stage monitoring in the rock world is synonymous with excessive volume. Musicians who are exposed to these sometimes alarming decibel levels over the course of many years may develop tinnitus or partial deafness, as in the case of Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck. But because Garwood's Radio Station system beltpacks enable the user to set his own comfortable listening level, there is hope yet for a musician's hearing.

Even hardened rocker, Francis Rossi, Status Quo's frontman, says: "With the in-ear system, I have been using one Marshall 4 x 12-inch, and I haven't done that since I can remember. It wouldn't normally be anywhere near enough to get the body of sound I need. But when you've got the sound right there in your ears, it's fine. It's like you are inches from the speaker. So you don't drive the hell out of your amp, you don't overplay your guitar, or need so much volume. At our age, it's about time! It initially felt a bit alien, but it was just a case of getting used to a whole new approach. At first, I thought we'd feel too detached from each other, because there's a lot of interplay going on between us on stage that keeps up the mood and humour, but it really hasn't been the case."