In ear monitors versus wedges? I am sure the answer to my question will be try out the in ear but am curious to know others thoughts and pros and cons. We are a five piece band and have been renting monitors (new band) but are about to make the investment.
For the past 2 years, the bands I perform with have been using in-ear monitors. But here are some thoughts to help with your dicision:
Speaker Monitoring
Wedge - or speaker - monitoring is the standard for both home studios and live music clubs. In live sound, the wedges are fed from either a separate monitor board, which takes a split from the stage and creates a custom mix for each musician, or fed from the auxiliary sends of the front-of-house sound board. Monitor wedges tend to be very loud; they're credited with being one of the reasons working musicians have to be so conscientious about their hearing health. The advantages to wedges are pretty clear cut — a lot of musicians prefer wedges because it allows them to form a custom listening environment that includes not only the wedge and the mix coming from it, but their guitar amps and the reverb of the room. However, most audiologists agree: the loudness of wedges is bad for your hearing. Wedge monitoring is also difficult for working bands who have to provide their own PA systems; the systems are heavy and require a lot of setup time.
In recording studios, speaker monitoring is the standard. It's challenging to get a good mix on headphones unless they're very flat and accurate. Speaker monitoring is also the best way to see what a mix will sound like on a variety of systems.
In-Ear Monitoring
In the early days of in-ear monitoring, engineers like Marty Garcia at Future Sonics were putting stock Sony earbuds in crude earmolds connected to hard-wired amplifiers. Now, 20 years later, we have extremely complicated in-ear systems; custom-molded earpieces with two or three speakers in each (to handle the mids, highs, and lows seperately) are becoming the standard, and many in-ear monitors are incorporating ambient systems into their earpieces to reduce the learning curve on in-ears. In-ear monitoring has several advantages, the greatest being hearing conservation. Cutting yourself off from loud stage wedges is a great idea, as you can control your volume and mix as you want it without a struggle.
The disadvantages are, surprisingly, similar to wedge monitoring: sometimes listeners push the in-ears louder than they should, forgetting that by doing so they can hit the same sound pressure levels as wedge monitors. In addition, a lot of artists can't get used to the isolation, which can be combated by using ambient microphones on stage.
For home studios, a good pair of in-ears can be an accurate - although expensive - way to monitor your recording mix.