Isolation from the Audience

Live sound goofballs do a lot of dumb things—from lousy gain structure to creating mixes that more resemble heavy equipment in operation than any sort of musical expression—but one of the most abused parts of a live sound system is, and probably will always be, the stage monitor system. The purpose of monitor systems is to give the performers some additional subtle feedback regarding timing, pitch, and balance beyond what they should be hearing from the FOH system. That purpose was lost sometime at least 40 years ago, when sound companies realized that most performers don’t give a good shit what the FOH system sounds like and could care less what their audience hears once those suckers have paid good money for an awful experience.

The the standard setup procedure, today, is to “wring out the monitors” as the band is setting up. That means some doofus will make huffing and plosive noises into various microphones until the monitor engineer has obtained the loudest, least musical possible sound from the monitor system. By the time the monitors are setup in this manner, the FOH system is usually unnecessary, volume-wise, and the FOH engineer is left to try to provide a micron of clarity to the mess that is blasting off of the stage. Usually, that underpaid and untalented soundclown takes that job slightly less seriously than the effort expended by a minimum wage private “security guard” at an abandoned Detroit public school building. The result is what we’ve all come to expect from most live music performances; even people in the industry are amazed at how awful live music sounds.

This weekend, I went to an outdoor show in town. The performance was hampered by being partially enclosed in a polyester PVC-coated stretched tents, which are pretty effective mid-range and above audio reflectors, but that didn’t explain how awful the sound was. The group was a 3-piece, very young, pop band with an over-achieving drummer who hammered the snare as if it were a tent post needing to be drilled deep into the asphalt. That set some kind of baseline for the monitor setup, since the drummer was (for once) the first guy on stage to be ready for the sound check. From there, everything went downhill fast. [You can tell by the stage picture, at left, that the sound company had a lot more monitor volume capacity than FOH capabilities.] I watched the sound check, but other than bumping monitor gains up until hitting the gain-before-feedback limits, I didn’t hear any output from the mains during the sound check. Honestly, I couldn’t tell if the mains ever made a contribution to the overall sound; even well into the show.

Obviously, there was zero intelligability from the system. Regardless of where I sat or stood, I couldn’t understand a word coming from the stage. They might as well been speaking French or Chinese, or both. Toward the end of the performance, I walked behind the stage and found (to no surprise at all) that the on-stage volume was substantially louder than the FOH output. While the on-stage sound quality was somewhat better than the FOH, it was mostly deafeningly loud. Probably so loud that the FOH mixer was already past the allowed volume for the venue (an outdoor festival).

For a few hours after leaving that show, I thought about the purpose of stage monitors in the current context. As best I can figure, monitor systems are intended to create acoustic space and physical distance between musicians and their audience. Not to bring the two together in a shared musical experience, but to drive a sonic wedge between the musicians, their fears and and insecurities and frustrations, and the overly-tolerant (and shrinking) audiences who are clearly not particularly discriminating because they put up with this abuse.

Earlier in the week, I was the FOH tech for a small venue performance. When I set up the system and stage, I took advantage of the fact that the performers didn’t list “monitors” in their equipment rider and left the monitors to the side where I could set them up if I needed them. Lucky for me and the audience, when the performers started testing their mics and instruments they were satisfied with the main’s spill and decided to go sans-monitors. The difference between the communication these musicians had with their audience, obviously aided by the close physical proximity, and the performance I saw later in the week was night-and-day. That physical proximity thing isn’t just a function of the venue setup, though. The loud group didn’t provide any high fidelity place for their audience to hear their music. Close or distant, it sounded muffled and distorted everywhere. In contrast, the acoustic/electric duo pictured next to this paragraph sounded clear, present, and natural everywhere in the room.

There has to be some sort of compromise louder acts can make to provide their audience with a decent aural experience. While most bands sound like crap, not all do. Not all bands that sound musical start with the mains, either, but they do make an effort to get out front and listen to the mains sometime before the show or early in the show. And when it sounds like crap, they do what it takes to fix it. One solution for the monitor mess is in-ear monitors, but that provides another level of isolation between the musicians and the audience; especially if the FOH system is overbearing. In-ears or traditional monitors, someone has to care what the audience is hearing and no artist worth listening to will leave that to a hired hand.

REVIEW: Shure E2c In-Ear Monitors

I'm slow to adapt to fashion and trends.  I've been wearing 2nd hand jeans since 1973 and I've passed through periods of trendiness and tackiness during that 30+  year interval without changing my habit.  It's not that I'm specially cantankerous, I just don't care what other people think.  Decades ago, SF writer Ted Sturgeon convinced me that "90% of everything is crap"; although I think Ted was an optimist.  The opinions of most folks are based on ignorance and the human herding instinct and I can't think of a reason in the world why anyone with half-a-brain would be interested.

All that said, I've viewed the iPod revolution with revulsion.  No, I'm not convinced that MP3 files are unlistenable.  In fact, I think as a consumer format MP3 files at low compression ratios are as good a format as consumers have had ever in history.  I do, however, dislike the hardware related to iPods.  The iPods, themselves, are disgusting pieces of audio crap, producing high levels of a variety of distortion components and low levels of unclipped output for the collection of really awful transducers typically connected to the output. 

As a writer who often works in less than ideal environments, including my own kitchen where my wife feels an overwhelming desire to interrupt my work any time she passes through the room, I've been on a long search for a small, comfortable, and decent sounding headphone for years.  Every couple of years, I give up on my most recent awful compromise and try another miserable earphone product.  I've suffered a variety of Sony failures (excluding a wonderful set of ear buds that I managed to lose in 1991 and for which I have never again found a replacement), Koss ear buds of every variety, and some expensive in-hear monitors that will remain unnamed to protect the reputations of folks who should know better. 

This year (2008), I coughed up another $100 for a pair of Shure E2c in-ear monitors.  My first impression was pretty awful.  Not because of the phones, but because the instruction manuals came in every language but English.  I had to go on-line with www.shure.com to find instructions in a language I most understand.  What's that about? Is the English-speaking world really that insignificant? 

The E2c's are odd shaped.  Fitting them to your head and ears is not intuitive, at least it wasn't for me.  I think they best fit when the cable is run behind your head.  There is a cable sleeve that can be snugged to your neck, helping to hold the phones in place after they are fitted. The cable appears to be very heavy duty and the 2-year warranty is probably an indication of how durable the cable actually is; cables being the usual weak point in this kind of audio equipment.  To get these phones in place, you pretty much have to screw them into your skull.  If they are fitted slightly off center of the ear canal, a look in either direction will shift the image and, sometimes, mute one of the phones.  When you find the right sleeve, though, the seal is solid and independent of movement. 

I pretty much expected to hate these things as much as I've hated every other ear phone experiment of the sort, but I was disappointed/surprised/amazed on the first listening.  After wrestling with the smoother, more comfortable silicon ear sleeves, I settled on the stiff foam ear plugs and found a combination of positions and cable routing that worked for my ears.  Rolling the foam up like industrial foam ear plugs, I managed to insert the driver far enough into my ear canal to keep the phones in place and on-axis with my ear drum.  Once that engineering task was finished, I began to experiment with listening material.

Listening to 320kbps MP3 files through my laptop computer, using Microsoft's Media Player was unimpressive.  Almost awful, in fact.  Everything seemed harsh, brittle, and a lot edgier than I remembered.  If I had needed to make a decision about the E2c's at this point, I'd have said they are tinny, distorted, and harsh.  I didn't, however, so I moved on to better sound sources.  Moving the exact same files to my Sony CD/MP3 player, I found that those tunes sounded much more rich, more dynamic, and less flawed than on the PC.  I didn't expect that, so I went back to the original source files, 44kHz/16 bit CDs.  Everything I disliked about the MP3 files moved even further to the background and the imaging became sharp, pleasant, and more detailed.  The bass, however, needed some EQ to find a balance.  I decided to drive these sensitive, relatively high impedance units with my home system, which includes a Hafler FET power amplifier.  The phones produced an even more focused, more pleasant, tighter, and more detailed sound, which totally surprised me.  What this indicates is that the E2c's are accurate enough to reproduce relatively minor (compared to most ear buds) differences in sound sources.  That's an accuracy not often found in this kind of product.   

This EQ requirement I noticed with the CD player was partially true because I was able to listen comfortably at dramatically lower levels than I do with most phones.  The upside to this is that I have found myself wearing the Shures for hours without fatigue or loss of enjoyment.  My 58-year-old ears are becoming very sensitive to volume, so this has multiple advantages.  After a morning of writing and listening to music, I suffer no tinnitus effects and I've enjoyed hours of acoustic isolation and productivity. 

Headphones are incredibly personal.  The phones that I like, or love, can easily be the phones you hate.  I haven't yet decided that I "love" the E2c monitors.  I do like them for the moment and that is about the best thing I can ever say about this kind of equipment. 

2010 Update: While I still like the sound of the Shures, the reliability has been suspect. I'm going on my 3rd pair (all in warranty) of the E2c set I bought in 2008. Both failed sets failed the same way; attenuated output from the right earpiece. The cables are not damaged. There was no obvious wax in the ports, but the output suddenly dropped about 12-15dB only on the right side. Shure's warranty policy has been terrific, but the downtime is irritating.