Old Man with Hearing Issues

[T_Gowan]

Well that's me. After years listening to loud rock and roll. Spending most of my life on a farm with tractors purring away for 16 hour days, chain saws and all the other toys farmers get to play with, my hearing sucks. Have had hearing aids for several years now. They are great, I can communicate with people now and watch tv without keeping the whole house awake.
They are the most atrocious things for music. Long story shorter than it could be, but not short. I'm a above average singer, one of my joys in life. But most of the time monitors on stage sound like crap to me and destroy the mood for my own voice. I do a lot of fill in gigs not using my own gear so I'm going to try this rout.
I have a digital mixer, ART mic splitter and a ton of mic cables. I'm going to split all the mics from the PA and send them to my own mixer with all its bells and whistles to try and make my heart swell for my own voice. Has compressors, graphic eq, limiters. reverb ( which I don't understand why vocalists don't want it in there ears). MUST CLAIRIFY THIS IS ALL GOING IN EAR MONITORS. Trying it this weekend. Will update.

[Bruce Weldy]

Have you considered some new hearing aids? A buddy of mine got some a couple of years back with iPhone control. He has different EQ settings for General, Music, etc.....music sounds much better to him now. Most hearing aids are EQed to boost the human vocal range for conversations.....but, that sucks for music.

Worth looking into.

[T_Gowan]

Been working with a new audiologist to try and iron out the issues. Mine has 4 programs that can be set up for different needs. One is for music but it needs to be tweaked for my ears. You know how hard it is to describe to a none musician what you are hearing . I need to sit down with known music and test tones and work our a list for trials. The devices have over twenty bands of eq but I can't access them due to licensing issues. So its on going at this point. The little app that comes with the aids has 3 bands, bit of a joke.
For music you need almost all the processing to be turned off, and just eq for your ears.

[T_Gowan]

Update on the weekend wedding gig. I set up my in ears with vocals, my bass, and a little of the band. It was night and day. Haven't enjoyed performing as much in a long time. Set up an approximate eq listening to music that I know. A limiter to keep from overdriving the transmitter. Fooled around with the mix as the night progressed.
It was cumbersome to set up so need to streamline the system, small snake from the splitter to the PA mixer, and perhaps another from the splitter to my mixer. But very worth while for me.

[Seth]

What mixer are you using and what is the band typically mixed on?

[T_Gowan]

This is a band I play with once in a while so not my gear. They have a powered Yorkville 20 some channels. So 2 monitors and 1 effects sends. I don't have access to the board easily. I have a Mackie Dl1608 so I have full 16 in, 6 aux out, all with comp, noise gate, 2 effects, eq is HI and Low pass and 4 band sweep. All outs have comp and 31 band graphic as well as the 4 band sweep. RTA as well. With this I could send monitor mixes to several people. If they have their own pad or phone they can mix there own assuming they are using in ear.