In ear and helix

[perhenning5]

I’m using in ear, but when i plug the helix to the bosrd, the sound in my in ear was bad, really bad... i have good in ear set, so i wondering, the sound guy have to find the sound i want of course, but, is there anything in the settings on the helix board i must do as well??? Help!!

[litesnsirens]

I don’t know how you are creating your presets.  Are you creating them through your in ears?  Through a regular set of headphones? Through an amp or PA speaker.  Also when you say “good ear set” that’s kind of relative so it would be good to know exactly what in ears you are using.  I spent $1200 USD plus other costs for a pair of JH Audio custom moulded in ears but I haven’t used them once since I got a pair of TRN V80s off amazon which are only around $50.   Despite difference in cost and that fact that they aren’t custom moulded, they sound much better.  I build my presets on my QSC K10.2 PA speaker (or a pair of them depending on how much effort I want to put into set up), and my guitar sounds absolutely amazing through the V80s.

 

There are so many factors to consider,  we need more information in order to figure out where to start.

[perhenning5]

Ok, i create my presets through an active amp, and a pair of great headphones. When i use regular monitor on the floor, it sounds great. I use shure se425 in ear system, and akg beltpack and system. When i plug in to this system, my guitar sounds like i’m playing through a mini amp sound terrible, i guess it have a lot to do with have the eq’s are set on the board and so on. 

[DunedinDragon]

5 hours ago, perhenning5 said:

Ok, i create my presets through an active amp, and a pair of great headphones. When i use regular monitor on the floor, it sounds great. I use shure se425 in ear system, and akg beltpack and system. When i plug in to this system, my guitar sounds like i’m playing through a mini amp sound terrible, i guess it have a lot to do with have the eq’s are set on the board and so on. 

 

Quite honestly I seriously doubt that.  Typically there's no real reason to make make a lot of EQ adjustments on a soundboard for aux or monitor outputs.  At least not any that would make the kind of difference that would account for the difference between a monitor and an in ear.  The first suspect would the the bandwidth of the transmission going to the beltpack, then the in ears themselves.  But the in ears should be able to be easily checked by simply plugging them directly into any recorded music source to see how they respond.

[codamedia]

If you tones are created to sound good at the FOH and in Monitors then they will work in a set of quality headphones/in-ears with no change, or very little change. IEM's should be fed from a monitor mix.... that mix should have some basic EQ on the strip. Any adjustments more than a couple DB here or there would indicate the preset is not as prepared for prime time as you think it is. 

[litesnsirens]

If you’re crafting your presets through headphones they should sound pretty good in your IEMs. I also own a set of 425s, the TRN V80s sound far superior so that might be a start.   Not only will your guitar sound better but so will drums, bass, vocals.  I could also recommend the KZ AS16s but they are 3 to 4 times the price but not much of a sonic improvement.  The V80s are so inexpensive you can keep a spare set around.  Check on amazon.

 

As far as EQ, I just put a basic mild V on the in ear transmitters, front of house has no eq.

[Stratman999]

I had this some years ago, it wasn't my guitar setup. My guitar sounded awful in ear. eventually the bass player turned the input trim/level on the mixer down. `Bingo great sounding guitar, basically the input signal was overloading the preamp causing tinny distortion . Hope this helps. 

[DunedinDragon]

30 minutes ago, Stratman999 said:

I had this some years ago, it wasn't my guitar setup. My guitar sounded awful in ear. eventually the bass player turned the input trim/level on the mixer down. `Bingo great sounding guitar, basically the input signal was overloading the preamp causing tinny distortion . Hope this helps. 

 

Now THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^  makes a lot of sense.  I often end up forgetting that a fair number of people running their own mixing boards don't even understand the most fundamental aspects of gain staging the channel inputs, which is Mixing 101.  It never even occurred to me because that's such a basic aspect of dialing in a mixing board I forget the chaos that can create if you don't do it.  This is a VERY likely candidate for something like what's happening to the OP.

[gunpointmetal]

Something is amiss in the presets themselves or at the board coming back to your in-ear system. My IEM rig sounds just like my stage rig, just without the room involved. This is one of the main reasons we've gone to our own mixer/IEM setups for both of my bands. Custom mixes that never change, individual channel EQ separate from the FOH feed if needed, saves time in setup/soundcheck because we don't need to involve the sound guy in the monitor mix and we can each control our own mix from our phones.