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[frank kayser]

Thanks Brian for the additional insight.  That squares with Dennis' "Occlusion Effect" link.  I can easily see why she is unable to put a finger on what is wrong - as it really "is in her head!" - well the bones, sinuses and other cavities. 


Dennis' article is not music oriented, and one of their "solutions" includes venting the earpieces.  That is what the Westone AM series of buds are attempting to make work.


I know the best practices for IEM is fully isolated buds.  I wonder if Westone is on to something.  A little pricy to experiment with...


frank

[Stephen Kirby]

Sensaphonics makes a system with mics in the earpieces that you can mix in with the monitor feed.  This allows some degree of aural localization with head movement and ambience although the pinea are not involved the same way an open ear is so it's not completely natural.  I would trust that, particularly having full control over both monitor and ambient levels as compared to a "vented" earpiece allowing in outside sound at some proportion of stage SPLs.  That channel would be hard to acoustically design so as to have a natural sound.  Long thin tubes have HF cutoffs and add weird upper mid resonances.
Dennis' explanations of the resonant cavity in a plugged ear canal fits with my experience of both Westone and Sensaphonics molds.  The Sensaphonics reach further into my ear.  The internal channel appears to be tapered as well so there's no dominate resonant frequency.  Probably one reason why they sound much better.

[Tim McCulloch]

When i first started using and mixing my own IEMs i got to experience all of this first hand, and it's a very real and definite issue that has to be solved differently depending on the artist.  For me, running my IEMs a touch hotter and actually ADDING a couple ms of delay on my vocal mic helped a good bit.  But fixing it for some of my other singers required all sorts of different solutions.  And some never had an issue at all.

This ^^ in bold.

It's all about time, folks.  While you can't make the resonance go away you can change the frequency at which it is excited, IF you can live with the small additional delay.

Musicians don't question the time-of-flight delay from the wedge monitor 6 feet away...  Just sayin'.

[frank kayser]

As always, so many great explanations and suggestions from all you folks.  Many, many thanks.
frank

[Jonathan Hole]

As always, so many great explanations and suggestions from all you folks.  Many, many thanks.
frank

Something that hasn't been said yet and should is that the "one ear out" method is more damaging to hearing than having no IEM at all.  The reason is that you end up increasing the volume of the ear with the IEM to compensate for the ambient level the other ear is contending with. (you can test this in a noisy environment such as an airplane cabin, playing music on your phone, get one earbud balanced with external noise, then put both in and you'll typically have to turn it back down)  While common in the short term while learning to live with IEM, pulling one ear out totally negates and even hurts the hearing protection element of using IEMs.  Hope this helps the OP...

[frank kayser]

Something that hasn't been said yet and should is that the "one ear out" method is more damaging to hearing than having no IEM at all.  The reason is that you end up increasing the volume of the ear with the IEM to compensate for the ambient level the other ear is contending with. (you can test this in a noisy environment such as an airplane cabin, playing music on your phone, get one earbud balanced with external noise, then put both in and you'll typically have to turn it back down)  While common in the short term while learning to live with IEM, pulling one ear out totally negates and even hurts the hearing protection element of using IEMs.  Hope this helps the OP...

Thanks.  I use an IEM when mixing with the iPad, so I have solo capability.  Great for vocal balance, not so good for overall tonality.  Though I'd never really put your two and two together, thinking back, your scenario is exactly what happens if I'm not extremely careful.  I'm sure singers are probably more vulnerable.
frank

[brian maddox]

Something that hasn't been said yet and should is that the "one ear out" method is more damaging to hearing than having no IEM at all.  The reason is that you end up increasing the volume of the ear with the IEM to compensate for the ambient level the other ear is contending with. (you can test this in a noisy environment such as an airplane cabin, playing music on your phone, get one earbud balanced with external noise, then put both in and you'll typically have to turn it back down)  While common in the short term while learning to live with IEM, pulling one ear out totally negates and even hurts the hearing protection element of using IEMs.  Hope this helps the OP...

This is true.  Plus...

When we hear the same thing in both ears, our brain PERCEIVES it as being twice as loud.  This means that when we REMOVE the sound from one ear, the brain automatically perceives sound in the remaining ear as HALF as loud.  To compensate, we will tend to turn the sound up in that ear by 6dB just to achieve the same perceived volume level.

You can easily test this for yourself, regardless of whether you're in a loud or quiet environment.  Put some music on in your earbuds, turn it up to a nice comfortable "loud" level.  Then take one out.  It will feel like the one that is left in your ear decreased significantly in volume.

So even if the stage volume is fairly quiet, pulling out one IEM without having the discipline to NOT increase the level in the remaining earpiece [and really, combining the word 'discipline' with 'singer' is kinda a non-starter] is a risky thing to do.

[Stephen Kirby]

Musicians don't question the time-of-flight delay from the wedge monitor 6 feet away...  Just sayin'.

Spatially the wedge is "over there".  The brain can naturally accommodate something over there being delayed slightly.  Even when it's broadcasting your own voice.  Things make sense.  Your voice coming from over there should sound however distant.
With IEM's, there's no "over there".  There's no spatial sensation at all.  It's all either in the middle of your head or level panned along the space between your ears.  It's never a natural sensation.  Some people can ignore the unnaturalness of it, others have a much harder time.

[Tim McCulloch]

[and really, combining the word 'discipline' with 'singer' is kinda a non-starter] is a risky thing to do.

I thought "Discipline" was an album by King Crimson...