Hey man, It was so great meeting you the other night at the Ryman! I sincerely appreciate the time you took to have a conversation with me and share so much wisdom. You are super kind! I REALLY enjoyed the concert and mix. I'll be keeping an eye out for the mix POV of Crystal Ball (and hopefully Mr. Roboto too :) )!
You’re welcome. I am not BS’ing anyone but I also stress that these tips may not work for everyone. Hopefully the viewer takes away some idea that they can adapt and use in their workflow.
Dude, you are amazing my man. Your understanding of the singer from their perspective is so clutch! I just started IEMS (Sensaphonics 3dme system) and am trying to get things dialed in; definitely a learning curve to this stuff as I knew there would be; but man, reverb is so key to me feeling like I'm not pushing, and instead supported and singing freely. Now I'm trying to find the gear needed to get rehearsals dialed in; let me know if there's an affordable mixer you really like that's not Bricast money lol! Great vid!
Thank You. The reverbs can be any units but the key is combining a short room reverb (.8 s or less) with a longer more vibe reverb. Some people like halls but plates work better for vocals I feel. The room reverb should be warm and help resonate the low mids from 250Hz 500Hz or so. It’s really just how it feels to you but the sweet spot will most likely lie in that range for a male vocal. Someone else can chime in on mixers but I have a feeling a lot of people will throw out X32 or M32 since there are boat loads of them in use. I am fortunate enough to be able to use more high-end gear, but the principles are the same. Combine this reverb technique with the parallel compression technique of part 1 and give it a go but you have many option$ in gear.
HELLO WE ARE FROM BRAZIL AND I JUST DISCOVERED YOUR CHANNEL HERE ON YT. THANKS FOR SHARING SUCH ACCURATE INFORMATION. I INTEND TO USE THESE MONITORS TIPS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. WE USE AN ALLEN & HEATH SQ5 MIXER AND LIKE THE SOUND AND FEATURES.
I highly appreciate your great wisedom. I already experimented with two types of verbs. I will definetly try what you teached us in this video. thanks so much, I love your videos ❤
Gonna try this for sure. Makes so much sense to me. (Always liked the combination in the studio. But our singer is just fine with every monitoring he gets, so we never tried anything :D)
That's very interesting. My experience was always completely reversed. Every time I tried giving a singer a little early reflections I've got the "I don't know what man, but something sounds weird" response. Different singers, different venues, different consoles... When I took it out and left only the reverb everything was back to normal. Never tried 2 different reverbs though. Definitely going to try that.
The ER should be a little dark. It’s easy to get a lot of sibilance in there if you are using the one reverb and sending from a channel strip that has the top boosted like we need to do in IEMs. 2 separate reverbs make it easy to EQ as needed, or you can EQ the aux send into the reverb and return. Sometimes it takes the singer a minute to wrap their heads around what they are hearing to determine if it’s be beneficial or not. But hey…they’re singers. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. :)
Hi there As a lead vocalist, I’m having some serious occlusion issues with using IEM, any tips on how to reduce this? Thanks so much! I’m using … Ultimate Ears - premier Sennheiser ew500 G4 system for the IEMs Shure beat58a wireless microphone Allen & Heath QU16
First off, your Rocketman video sounds great. I enjoyed listening to that and the camera angle showing the street is a nice touch. For your occlusion issue, you are hearing the latency between the resonance of your head and the time it takes your voice to go through the digital signal path back to your ears. This is something I always stress when I am speaking to manufacture reps who claim their products "only add.... milliseconds" the the chain. When you start adding at digital console in there (your A&E desk is 1.2ms XLR in to out, your wireless (I am guessing it is a digital wireless system) is adding probably .62ms to the chain. If you send your signal out of the desk to any digital or analog inserts, you are adding more. Long story short, is you need to try to shorten the path. Humans are supposed to be able to tell 5ms or something like that but I feel singers are incredibly sensitive to what they are hearing and even 2ms is noticeable for us. How do we get around this? Well it's another video I need to do but I am not going to make you wait for that. If there is any way to keep the vocal chain to the IEMs analog, that's what you should do. Running at a higher sampling rate on the desk will help, but the QU will only do 48k I believe. To break it down, the wireless should be fed into an analog preamp (even if it's just a small analog mixer) and the digital mixer feeds channels 2 and 3 of the analog mixer with the band mix. The analog mixer feeds the IEM transmitter. OR Mic to analog preamp to "Y" cable input. That "Y" cable feeds into the 'A' side of 2 SUMMING 'Y' cables. Summing 'Y' cable feeds the IEM transmitter. The other side of the Summing 'Y' cables are fed a stereo band mix from the digital console. I don't know what your level of technical aptitude is or your soldering skills, but that's how to keep your IEM's wireless, your band mix on a digital mixer, and any vocal processing you need should be analog either in that analog mixer or before it hits the mixer. Summing XLR cables have 2 450 Ohm resistors and a 20K resistor in them if you make them yourself. The Y cable that split the signal are just a hard split of the 3 XLR pins from an XLRF to 2 MXLR. This is all assuming this is what you meant by the occlusion effect. 😃
@@cookie_mix this is something I've been interested in trying to actually measure - the time it takes for the (non bone-conducted voice) to acoustically make it from the mouth to the ear, and adjusting the latency of the signal path to match. Also whether or not room reflections and room geometries have a substantial impact on the "airborne" part of the voice a performer hears in a live room. I've also been thinking about musicians transitioning from wedges to IEMs and whether it makes any sense to add in yet another delayed copy of the vocal to simulate a wedge sitting several feet away on top of it all... at least for a transitionary period. Yeeeehaw.
@@mashzmashthose are all good questions. I also tend to wonder if since we don’t walk around all day with ear plugs in, our brain isn’t used to hearing the voice with the occlusion effect. Maybe it’s just an enhanced perception of it or maybe the dB level of the resonance is increased when the ear canal is closed off. This is an audiologist’s lane. The brain is great at adapting to sound locations but occlusion is not something that we train ourselves on.
Hey man, It was so great meeting you the other night at the Ryman! I sincerely appreciate the time you took to have a conversation with me and share so much wisdom. You are super kind! I REALLY enjoyed the concert and mix. I'll be keeping an eye out for the mix POV of Crystal Ball (and hopefully Mr. Roboto too :) )!
At last I am hearing something from some one that knows what they are talking about!!! THanks YOU!!!!!
You’re welcome. I am not BS’ing anyone but I also stress that these tips may not work for everyone. Hopefully the viewer takes away some idea that they can adapt and use in their workflow.
Dude, you are amazing my man. Your understanding of the singer from their perspective is so clutch! I just started IEMS (Sensaphonics 3dme system) and am trying to get things dialed in; definitely a learning curve to this stuff as I knew there would be; but man, reverb is so key to me feeling like I'm not pushing, and instead supported and singing freely. Now I'm trying to find the gear needed to get rehearsals dialed in; let me know if there's an affordable mixer you really like that's not Bricast money lol! Great vid!
Thank You.
The reverbs can be any units but the key is combining a short room reverb (.8 s or less) with a longer more vibe reverb. Some people like halls but plates work better for vocals I feel.
The room reverb should be warm and help resonate the low mids from 250Hz 500Hz or so. It’s really just how it feels to you but the sweet spot will most likely lie in that range for a male vocal.
Someone else can chime in on mixers but I have a feeling a lot of people will throw out X32 or M32 since there are boat loads of them in use. I am fortunate enough to be able to use more high-end gear, but the principles are the same. Combine this reverb technique with the parallel compression technique of part 1 and give it a go but you have many option$ in gear.
@@cookie_mix Really appreciate the perspective here; Ill give this approach a shot and hit ya back! Great work!
HELLO WE ARE FROM BRAZIL AND I JUST DISCOVERED YOUR CHANNEL HERE ON YT. THANKS FOR SHARING SUCH ACCURATE INFORMATION. I INTEND TO USE THESE MONITORS TIPS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. WE USE AN ALLEN & HEATH SQ5 MIXER AND LIKE THE SOUND AND FEATURES.
Welcome!
Hey Cookie, could you do more of these tips? Would love to hear more!
Is your focus FOH or Mons?
@@cookie_mix mons
I love the way you explain things. You are a wealth of knowledge!
I appreciate that! Thank You.
I highly appreciate your great wisedom. I already experimented with two types of verbs. I will definetly try what you teached us in this video. thanks so much, I love your videos ❤
Hopefully this helped!
Two bricastis…. TWO!?! FOR EARS.
Great set man!! These are a treat!!
Spoiled. I know.
Gonna try this for sure. Makes so much sense to me. (Always liked the combination in the studio. But our singer is just fine with every monitoring he gets, so we never tried anything :D)
Lemme know how it goes.
Looking forward to trying this on my next gig., with 3 singers and 7 stereo IEM mixes. Hopefully the singers will be happier.
Good luck and tell me how it goes.
That's very interesting. My experience was always completely reversed. Every time I tried giving a singer a little early reflections I've got the "I don't know what man, but something sounds weird" response. Different singers, different venues, different consoles... When I took it out and left only the reverb everything was back to normal. Never tried 2 different reverbs though. Definitely going to try that.
The ER should be a little dark. It’s easy to get a lot of sibilance in there if you are using the one reverb and sending from a channel strip that has the top boosted like we need to do in IEMs.
2 separate reverbs make it easy to EQ as needed, or you can EQ the aux send into the reverb and return.
Sometimes it takes the singer a minute to wrap their heads around what they are hearing to determine if it’s be beneficial or not. But hey…they’re singers. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. :)
This is a great tip !!! Thanks cookie
Happy to help!
Thanks!
Welcome!
Hi there
As a lead vocalist, I’m having some serious occlusion issues with using IEM, any tips on how to reduce this? Thanks so much!
I’m using …
Ultimate Ears - premier
Sennheiser ew500 G4 system for the IEMs
Shure beat58a wireless microphone
Allen & Heath QU16
I should add, my voice is quite deep… making the occlusion worse than say a singer who has a higher thin voice. Here is my voice type in this link
ruclips.net/video/u6y4aimrW04/видео.htmlsi=q__65vEf6UnOE_Yf
First off, your Rocketman video sounds great. I enjoyed listening to that and the camera angle showing the street is a nice touch.
For your occlusion issue, you are hearing the latency between the resonance of your head and the time it takes your voice to go through the digital signal path back to your ears.
This is something I always stress when I am speaking to manufacture reps who claim their products "only add.... milliseconds" the the chain. When you start adding at digital console in there (your A&E desk is 1.2ms XLR in to out, your wireless (I am guessing it is a digital wireless system) is adding probably .62ms to the chain. If you send your signal out of the desk to any digital or analog inserts, you are adding more.
Long story short, is you need to try to shorten the path. Humans are supposed to be able to tell 5ms or something like that but I feel singers are incredibly sensitive to what they are hearing and even 2ms is noticeable for us.
How do we get around this? Well it's another video I need to do but I am not going to make you wait for that.
If there is any way to keep the vocal chain to the IEMs analog, that's what you should do. Running at a higher sampling rate on the desk will help, but the QU will only do 48k I believe.
To break it down, the wireless should be fed into an analog preamp (even if it's just a small analog mixer) and the digital mixer feeds channels 2 and 3 of the analog mixer with the band mix. The analog mixer feeds the IEM transmitter.
OR
Mic to analog preamp to "Y" cable input. That "Y" cable feeds into the 'A' side of 2 SUMMING 'Y' cables. Summing 'Y' cable feeds the IEM transmitter. The other side of the Summing 'Y' cables are fed a stereo band mix from the digital console.
I don't know what your level of technical aptitude is or your soldering skills, but that's how to keep your IEM's wireless, your band mix on a digital mixer, and any vocal processing you need should be analog either in that analog mixer or before it hits the mixer.
Summing XLR cables have 2 450 Ohm resistors and a 20K resistor in them if you make them yourself. The Y cable that split the signal are just a hard split of the 3 XLR pins from an XLRF to 2 MXLR.
This is all assuming this is what you meant by the occlusion effect.
😃
@@cookie_mix this is something I've been interested in trying to actually measure - the time it takes for the (non bone-conducted voice) to acoustically make it from the mouth to the ear, and adjusting the latency of the signal path to match. Also whether or not room reflections and room geometries have a substantial impact on the "airborne" part of the voice a performer hears in a live room. I've also been thinking about musicians transitioning from wedges to IEMs and whether it makes any sense to add in yet another delayed copy of the vocal to simulate a wedge sitting several feet away on top of it all... at least for a transitionary period. Yeeeehaw.
@@mashzmashthose are all good questions. I also tend to wonder if since we don’t walk around all day with ear plugs in, our brain isn’t used to hearing the voice with the occlusion effect. Maybe it’s just an enhanced perception of it or maybe the dB level of the resonance is increased when the ear canal is closed off. This is an audiologist’s lane. The brain is great at adapting to sound locations but occlusion is not something that we train ourselves on.