I’ve been talking to a few different people recently about stereo IEM’s instead of mono. The advantages of mono are perhaps more obvious than the advantages of stereo, you can have twice as many mono outputs that stereo. This is very useful for us at church because of the number of musicians we have on stage at once. With a standard line up containing 8 BV’s, each with their own mix, its understandable how we quickly become short of outputs.
However, it is when there are lots of different musicians that stereo mixes really make a big difference. In mono you hear the same signal in both ears, giving you no way to localize sound, everything appears straight ahead of you in this mono image. In stereo you can localize different sounds based on level difference; its louder on the left, therefore it is on the left. This ability to localize gives a much greater sense of space, doubling the number of channels doesn’t just double the amount of perceived space, it gives you almost infinitely more places to put things in the audio field. The job of a monitor engineer is to enable the musician to play as well as possible by enabling them to hear everything they need to hear. If a singer can’t hear themselves then they are far more likely to have issues with pitch. If all someone needs to hear is themselves then mono is definitely sufficient, but this takes me back to the added benefit of stereo in a larger band: When there are more people playing it is harder to fit everyone into everyone’s ears; this encourages people to play more, making a mix muddier and with people more likely to play clashing parts. With the extra space that you get by running in stereo the monitor engineer can fit more of the musicians that you need to hear into your mix giving you the confidence to play less and stopping people playing clashing melodies. This results in the sound out front being better.
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