Review: Ear Monitor Australia Custom Triple Driver In-Ear Monitors

Anyone who plays music to an audience knows that one of the most fundamental needs during a performance, no matter whether you’re a singer, a drummer, guitarist or trombone player is surely the ability to hear yourself. Nothing makes a greater mess of a vocalist’s pitch or a drummer’s timing, for example, than bad monitoring (apart from a dearth of skill) and I’m yet to hear anyone sing in tune that can’t hear themselves – you’ve only got to listen to someone singing in the street wearing their iPod to know that.

In recent years, of course, since we first puzzled over why Michael Stipe (from REM) seemed to be wearing a hearing aid on stage, the delivery of foldback has been revolutionised – turned on its ear, as it were. In-ear monitoring has swept through the concert scene like a stiff breeze and quickly grown into a viable and reliable (and vastly lighter!) alternative to foldback wedges. The benefits of in-ear monitoring systems (IEMs) include vastly improved monitoring for individual performers who, crucially, can monitor at their own level rather than that of the loudest player on stage. Keyboard players no longer need to endure painfully loud vocal levels, drummers can avoid 120dB guitar amps thrust in their face, feedback from vocal mics (the bane of most house engineers’ existence) can be virtually eliminated and overall stage volumes can be dramatically reduced. This of course has massive spin-off effects at front of house, where the engineer can finally focus on the tone and volume of the PA and the instruments amplified through it, rather than spend half the time fighting with the compromises that arise from system feedback, phase and volume anomalies that inevitably occur when the on-stage foldback system gets too loud. What’s more, IEM foldback systems can be taken with you wherever you go… in a briefcase rather than the back of a truck.

So great has been this swing to in-ear monitoring in the last few years that it’s virtually accepted now that any singer on stage will be wearing ‘hearing aids’ and any lingering prejudice or embarrassment caused by wearing them (from either side of the punter barrier) has been swept away. I remember many years ago the Australia cricketer Dean Jones (who was never easily embarrassed) walking out onto the international cricketing arena wearing sunglasses for the fist time, and for a brief period he was a laughing stock. Now virtually every cricketer right down to the under 12s wears them – and sunglasses are now as fundamental to a cricketer’s kit as the ‘box’. A similar movement is now occurring with in-ear monitors.

But custom-fitted in-ears aren’t something you can simply walk into a shop and buy (like a box), for the obvious reason that they have to be fitted by an expert (unlike a box), and they’re not something you can ‘try before you buy’ either – for the same reason. Taking the plunge into the world of custom in-ears is therefore, in some ways, a leap of faith and reviewing Ear Monitors Australia’s new custom three-way Triple Driver in-ears has had to take this into account. I can’t suggest you go and try them for yourselves and make up your own mind whether they’re for you before you buy them, like I’ve been able to with other gear in the past. Nor can I tell you that they’re sonically superior to the company’s cheaper two-way systems like the ones Gary Davis reviewed in Issue 38 because I can’t try his on. I can only tell you what I’ve experienced with the triple-driver system that’s been custom-fitted to my ears by Ear Monitors Australia and endeavour to offer those who haven’t had the experience of wearing them what it feels like to be ‘in the world of in-ears’. This is an unfortunate state of affairs perhaps, and I guess the main reason why many people buy ‘off-the-shelf’ earbuds – after all, no one likes to buy expensive equipment like this on spec – but make no mistake, these custom moulded in-ears are miles ahead of ‘generics’ in terms of fit and fidelity.

LIGHT EARS AHEAD

I’ve been wearing my custom three-way in-ears everywhere for the last couple of months. I’ve used them during rehearsal, worn them in place of standard headphones during backing vocal tracking, as playback headphones during mixing and even worn them around as my new (very expensive) iPod headphones. And I can tell you I’ve had some funny looks around the place in that situation, particularly from old ladies in the supermarket, who have seen the skin-toned plastic moulds in my ears and clearly thought: “the poor chap; it’s very sad to see someone so young having to wear two hearing aids.” What I’ve discovered since Ear Monitors Australia first asked me what colour I’d like my in-ear moulds to be (basically you can get them made in any colour you fancy – I chose ‘skin tone’ rather than ‘gold sparkle’) is that any use of the skin-toned variety off stage is met with that same empathetic glance… everywhere you go… maybe I should have ordered the sparkly ones!

HOW THEY SOUND

What I can say with great confidence is that these sealed three-way in-ears sound fantastic. They’re superbly clear and articulate and offer a truly balanced tone right across the audio spectrum. They’re certainly not ‘subby’ by any stretch but nor are they ‘thin’ sounding – they’re ‘just right’ in my opinion, especially live on stage where stray subs can leak through in-ear moulds anyway… They’re not harsh or brutal sounding like some other ear-bud generics I’ve endured that also rarely fit properly – or wedges for that matter – but rather, sound more like an expensive nearfield monitor. The midrange is vivid yet smooth and wearing them for extended periods is a breeze both physically and sonically. They’re actually incredibly comfortable once you get used to wearing them – in fact, I’m wearing them right now as I write this, listening to Daniel Lanois’ Belladonna album – sounds amazing.

What’s unusual about in-ears like these custom three-ways (which emit sound directly into the ear canal, is that your ears don’t perceive the stereo image in quite same way. By this I mean, you’re not being presented with a stereo image as such, as is the case with ‘off-ear’ headphones or free-standing speakers, you are the stereo image. What this creates is an extraordinary sense of depth and space. To that end, these in-ears make wedges seem very old-school indeed and offer so much more distortion-free fidelity, stereo imaging and improved tonal balance that once you’re used to the feeling of wearing them (they can seem slightly odd at first, but wearing them quickly becomes second nature) it’s hard to imagine monitoring with wedges again. The only concern I have would be to note that these types of monitoring systems can initially make you feel a little ‘cut off’ from the people around you [although Ear Monitors Australia does offer a ‘talk through’ in-ear system if that’s your preference] and if you’re a singer who opens his or her mouth wide, the movement of your jaw can break the seal against your ear and thus lessen the bass response in strange fits and starts as you open and close your mouth.