The Night the Stage Went Quiet
I remember the first major tour where we made the full switch to IEMs across the board. Not a hybrid setup — full in-ears, artist and band. No wedges. I was mixing monitors.
The first thing that hit me at soundcheck wasn't the sound. It was the silence. I was sitting at my console, watching the artist walk through a rehearsal, arms crossed, and I remember thinking — this is a completely different job now.
It was.
Before IEMs, the stage was a volume war that nobody was winning. Wedges fighting drums. Drums fighting PA spill. Everyone asking for more of themselves, louder. I was doing damage control every night, and the artist was still never quite hearing what they wanted to hear. It was loud, it was inconsistent, and over time it destroyed people's hearing.
IEMs didn't just change the technology. They changed the entire relationship between the artist and what they hear during a show.
What the Change Actually Brought
The obvious benefits are the ones people talk about: quieter stages, consistent mixes, hearing protection. All of that is real. An artist in IEMs is hearing the same mix every night regardless of the room. The bad acoustics in a concrete arena don't reach their ears the way they used to. The drum bleed that made everything muddy is gone.
But the less-discussed shift is what it did to the performance.
Some artists love IEMs immediately. The clarity, the control, the consistency. Others struggle with the isolation — they can't feel the crowd, can't hear the room responding to them, and it affects the energy of the show. A great monitor engineer knows how to bridge that gap with ambient microphones — crowd mics that feed the room sound back into the artist's ears just enough that they feel connected to the audience without losing the mix clarity.
Getting that balance right is an art form. And it starts long before show day.
"You don't fix monitor world problems at soundcheck. You fix them in the advance."
What PMs Need to Know
I'm no longer a monitor engineer. I'm a production manager. But monitor world is my problem if something goes wrong on show day, so I stay close to it on every advance. Three things I make sure are handled every time.
- RF Coordination. This is the one that can blow up a show and nobody sees it coming until it does. At stadium and arena level, you're coordinating RF across IEMs, wireless guitars, wireless microphones, broadcast television, venue Wi-Fi, local public safety frequencies, and sometimes multiple acts on the same stage. The interference that kills an artist's in-ear mix mid-show usually traces back to a coordination failure that could have been caught weeks earlier. On a major tour, this requires a dedicated RF coordinator — someone whose entire job is mapping frequencies, coordinating with local broadcast trucks, and making sure every wireless device on that stage has a clean lane. This is not optional at our level. If it's not budgeted for, budget for it.
- Artist Mix Communication. The monitor engineer needs to know exactly what the artist wants in their ears before they ever step on stage. Not in a general sense — specifically. What instruments matter most. What they need to hear from the background vocals. Whether they want crowd ambience and how much. Whether they're running one ear out. These conversations belong in the advance, not at the first rehearsal. If the monitor engineer is learning the artist's preferences at soundcheck on day one of the tour, that's a planning problem, not an audio problem.
- Backup Systems. IEMs fail. A transmitter drops at the wrong moment. An ear mold cracks. A battery goes bad. Every show needs a plan B — whether that's a spare pack, a single wedge on deck for emergencies, or a full backup system standing by. I advance that conversation with the venue and with monitor world before we ever load in. You don't want to be improvising that in front of 50,000 people.
The Thing That Hasn't Changed
For all the technology that's evolved around IEMs — the custom molds, the wireless systems, the digital consoles, the RF coordination tools — the most important thing in monitor world is still exactly what it was in the wedge era: the relationship between the monitor engineer and the artist.
That relationship is built on trust. The artist has to believe that the person behind that console is listening to them, adjusting for them, and solving problems in real time without being asked. A great monitor engineer doesn't wait to be told something is wrong. They hear it before the artist does.
I've worked with monitor engineers who could walk into any situation — different venue, different system, different act — and have the artist completely dialed in before the end of soundcheck. That skill doesn't come from the gear. It comes from years of watching, listening, and learning how performers hear.
The technology keeps changing. That part doesn't.
Pass It On
I started on the audio side of touring before I moved into production management. Monitor world shaped a lot of how I think about advancing a show — because I know firsthand what it feels like when that part of the day goes wrong.
If you're a PM trying to figure out how to advance monitor world properly, or you're dealing with RF coordination issues on a multiact show and need to talk it through, my contact info is on this site. Reach out.
Get the advance right. The rest takes care of itself.