I still maintain even with a stellar mono mix, you would have to know the timbre of each voice/instrument to know who is who just by listening, and that's more divided attention onstage in the heat of the moment. It would be taking a rather long way around even if I could. However, everyone's mix is different and while I generally can eq each IEM channel independently of FOH (digitally double-patching) I can't optimise each channel eq for EACH mix.
Getting my mono mixes as close as possible to the clarity of stereo. Who decides the pan position of instruments since every body does not have the same position on the stage?Perhaps there's a challenge to pursue. A good mono mix should have clarity and definition. The theme here.stereo means clarity is interesting and surprising because one of the high technical hallmark of a stereo mix is that it should fold down to mono and still sound good. But this comes at a significantly higher cost in equipment. We experienced a significant benefit moving from floor wedges to mono IEMs.Īre stereo IEMs a like to have? Yes. Typically, they pan themselves to the center and the others singers are panned a bit left and right.Īre stereo IEMs a hard requirement? No. In our case, each performer runs their own IEM mix from their IPhone/Andriod. When running stereo, everyone can be heard clearly and at a lower volume. When running mono, sometimes it was difficult to distinguish different performers clearly. I would say that you would have to experience it to "feel" the difference. Basically, it provides the ability to distinctly hear all of the performers at a lower volume when compared to a mono mix. The difference in my opinion (and we all know what opinions are like) was significant. One day, I decided to try the IEMs in stereo mode. Plus, we did not have to carry floor monitors, cables, and amps which is a great benefit to reduce setup time (and save my back). Once we were all using IEMs, we saw a dramatic improvement in the quality of our performances, as we could now hear each other much better due to the reduction of stage volume. As time passed we acquired more equipment and finally we had all of the band running mono IEMs (except the drummer who always had a stereo mix using a wired IEM). About five years ago, I started the transition to IEMs by replacing a couple of floor wedges with one Sennheiser EW300 G3 and running two separate mono mixes. We are all older (~50) and have careers, so we do music as a hobby. We play small venues (<200), weddings, parties, charity events and the like. Many sound mixers and musicians will argue that creating a stereo FOH mix is ineffective and useless in most situations, so why do so many musicians and monitor mixers think it's important or even essential to produce and have a stereo in-ear mix?Our band currently uses stereo mixes for IEMs. With even a little live stage sound mixing in, this small amount of panning to offset the nulls a little, makes it almost impossible for me to detect the 'shift from centerline phasy sound'.Īs for the inears thing: well, stereophonic location DOES work with phones or buds.
As we know, you can only achieve a theoretically maximum or 'ultimate' series of deep 'comb filter nulls' when the amplitude of two sources (which are arriving at different times) are EQUAL the comb boosts and bucks rapidly diminish (especially the 'bucks' - the cancellation nulls) as you unbalance their levels: well - if there's a little, almost 'obligatory' and arbitrary panning in the mix - little enough that if you listened to EITHER side, both mixes would still be within the realm of a reasonable mix production - then it rather 'smears' these just-off-center deep-nulls, so they don't all correlate together, as you begin to move off-center. To me, a great advantage of using a little (a LITTLE) panning reasons-out like this: The most 'irritating' thing to me about two-speaker, all-center-panned sound (I love the sound of ONE-speaker mono!) is the distinct comb filter phasing effect, when you are at ALMOST-center - within a few feet of 'center line'. (This "Rat" idea of hard-panning a Bass DI opposite from Bass cab even really bugs me!) Also: often when this subject is argued, folks start going right to the extreme case of hard-panning - which creates such obvious and unacceptable problems with even coverage of the room, that I hardly know why it's debated at all. First, I think the main 'ineffectual' part of live venue stereo is to those expecting realistic PLACEMENT of elements in a stereo field - 'phantom Center' and all.
Feel free to destroy my reasoning: I've learned much from you!