Transcripts:
What if I told you the most important part of any live performance is this thing? That might surprise you. Concerts are huge endeavors. They feature massive stages, robust sound systems, dozens of musicians and dancers, hundreds of crew members, and all of those matter, of course, but I could still argue this matters most.
This is an in-ear monitor. Most artists you see live wear a pair and if they fail the whole show can be derailed. Mariah said she couldn't hear her tracks because of a faulty earpiece. Sorry guys, my ears are going. Can I get rid of this please? So today I want to dive into in ears, why they matter, and the surprisingly loose story of how they came to be.
In-ear monitors are monitors that go in your mouth. Trust me, I have a degree in music. They're basically earbuds that are specifically designed for live performances. You can get them from various audio manufacturers or you can get them custom molded for your ears. When you're wearing them on stage, you're able to hear the other musicians clearly.
Plus, they act as hearing protection when the speakers are all like that's the surface level debrief. But going to Defcon ear will require a more thorough understanding of the in-ear space. And to do that properly, I'll need some help. My name is Mike Dus. I have been in Pro Audio for over 25 years. And right now, I'm making a movie about the world's greatest headphones, the birth of in-ear monitors, and how those impacted the global headphone revolution.
Mike has worked with top performers and engineers for decades, mostly through his time building up Ultimate Ears, one of the largest in-ear manufacturers today. What I got to see wasn't just the stage itself. It was the people who are invisible by design, who support all that infrastructure, that ecosystem, all the sound engineers who are emotional security blankets for the artist on stage, right? Everybody who is there behind the scenes working tirelessly, effortlessly to create the illusion, to create the magic, and to
bring it to all of us music fans. I feel I should also disclose that Mike was my boss at my last full-time job. He is also loosely responsible for this channel even existing after the year 2020, but that's a whole other story. We worked together for five plus years yet. I don't think we've ever covered any of this or talked about any of this, right? I only know it in like small pieces.
Never heard the full legend. So, let's start the story here. Who invented in ears? Uh, I mean, we can rule out salamanders cuz they don't even have ears. Turns out this is a really tricky question to answer. In ears are a lot like karaoke. There are lots of people who could claim to be the inventor because they all came up with part of what the end product is.
You have these few major players. There was Steven Ambrose as the future Sonics team. Steven Ambrose was the first person who could be described as the inventor of the in-ear. In 1965, when he was just 13 years old, he put tiny speakers into bubblegum so he could listen to country music without his dad hearing.
Over time, he would develop that design further and make in- ears for artists such as Diana Ross and Simon and Garfuncle. Oh, and he also replaced the gum with clay molds. In case you thought he kept the gum, or I guess artists could request the gum if they wanted it, but that would be kind of gross. Fast forward to the mid1 1980s. Sound engineer Chris Lindup modified Steven's design while he was out on the road with Stevie Wonder.
Chris's big innovation was using an FM receiver in tandem with typical earbuds. In other words, Chris made in-ears that were wireless, allowing performers to move around the stage. His design would later be used by Rod Stewart and Peter Gabriel. And then there was Dr. Michael Sanuchi very much of the hearing health camp like Dr.
Tentuchi now works for the World Health Organization on hearing health conservation on a global scale. He founded Sensophonics in 1985 as an advocacy firm for hearing conservation and later moved into designing in ears. But the man who was most known for commercializing the in-ear monitor is Jerry Harvey. Jerry was the monitor engineer for Van Halen.
And in 1995, Alex Van Halen walked up to Jerry and said, "Look, Jerry Bubby, it's way too freaking loud up there. We can't hear each other. Help us out. So Jerry went and built his own in- ears from various electrical components and a pacemaker. The resulting design was soon adopted by other rock musicians. But the key difference in Jerry's story is what happened next.
After some time, Jerry decided to start his own in-ear manufacturer, Ultimate Ears. And over the following three decades, UI in ears would be used by the Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith Hill, and several more. While each of these people took their own routes to come up with in ears, they all had one thing in common. Nobody set out to change the world or to create trigger the global headphone revolution.
Everybody first approached it like, "How do I do my job better? How do I deliver a show better? How do I support my artist better?" Audio guys take literally zero pictures or recordings of anything. And it it makes sense because it's just the job, dude. It's just the show goes on and this is a tool to make it better. Nobody thought they were changing the world while they were doing it.
They're just trying to do their job better. This is kind of wild, right? Imagine the cure for cancer being invented and when someone asks who's responsible, you're like, "Oh yeah, I think that was Bob. He just whipped it up during his lunch break." Crazy, bro. Ludicrous. These are people who are next to fame and arguably more famous than the artists themselves in the behind-the-scenes circles, but yet who have never been on that side of the glass or have told their story.
They've just been very content and very proud and very happy to be the support that enables the show. Now, that all explains how the in-ear came to be, but they are far more important to concerts than most people today realize. Let's first make this distinction. What you hear at a concert is not the same as what the musicians hear.
We hear the front of house mix which is done by the front of house engineer in his front of house house with his front of house mouse. But the musicians are hearing a monitor mix done by the monitor engineer. And it's not the same across the board. If there are five band members playing, there are five different mixes for five different humans needing to focus on five different things.
A drummer is going to typically want to hear click, is going to want to hear playback, is going to want to hear bass, little vocals, a little guitar, but they need to stay in their world in their pocket, right? A guitarist just wants to guitarist just wants to hear themselves, right? And a vocalist just really wants to be able to stay in tune and key and, you know, whatever they're tuning off of.
It's that ability for a monitor engineer to create mixes for each performer that allows each performer to perform. Hearing Mike describe that situation made me wonder, what if the monitor engineer is the most important person in any live show? Now, did I just say that to gain political favor with any monitor engineers watching so I can be elected the president of monitor engineers? No way.
But they are a lot more important than most people would think. A monitor engineer is not just great at doing sound. They're great at reading minds. As such, the modern engineer becomes this conduit. Like, how do I help you perform better? And how do I keep you safe? Because the flip side is when the artist doesn't feel like they're killing it or they're not delivering or they're having a bad show, they also need somebody to blame. Yeah.
And so it's really easy to look side stage and mother f your mom and everybody else to right there. It's your fault, not my fault. It's not the crowd's fault. I didn't miss the beat. You miss giving me the queue. You're fired. Next guy. Because there's a lot writing on a monitor engineer to do his job right.
concert prices are so high that most fans want the concert to feel exactly like the stream of the the music itself. But to get that, there's a ridiculous amount of tech that goes into it, right? There's so much playback. Tracks that are not visible on the stage that were pre-recorded but still fed in.
That's playback. And you really have to be in time and in sync with the invisible players or nothing's going to come together. And this is the chicken or egg debate because does the artist want that or does the audience want that? And I don't know, right? It goes back to what the band and what their ethos is. Is it pop where you go for the spectacle and the performance and the dancing and the music is great but secondary to the spectacle or are you going to hear the Rolling Stones play the song as they interpret it and feel it in that moment?
Now that's a hefty piece of conceptual stake to chew on. And while you're at it, I'm about to send in the airplane with another hefty idea. Lately, I've been thinking about isolation when it comes to music. Folks are always talking about how wireless earbuds and Spotify algorithms have allowed people to stay put in their own musical bubbles.
I even came across an article recently that bemoaned a future with no socializing at all due to personalized music. The article was from the8s and it was about the Walkman. Look at him go. But during our talk, Mike brought up a fascinating point. Concerts are seen as the antidote for musical isolation.
It's impossible to not be social at a concert as an audience member. But what if you're a performer? I don't know about you, but I don't like to stand in front of 10,000 people or 100,000 people. It makes me very nervous. It takes a lot of training to be able to stand in front of people and to feel really comfortable.
And I'm not even sure if it's training if you ever get used to it or if you just develop the muscle memory and the nerves to deal with it. And so one really nice thing about tuning the world out and going into your own little safe space is it's a great way to deal with nerves. It's an interesting contradiction. Even when they're performing for hundreds or thousands of people, putting on the most social event you can do in music, their inears keep them at a distance.
Now, of course, musicians do interact with each other on stage, and they sometimes interact with audience members, but given the amount of planning and playback tracks, at least for major tours, there's only so much wiggle room available for unscripted moments. So, while in ears allow the show to happen as intended, they do also play a part in personalized earbuds dominating so much of everyday life.
Going to a concert is one of the last things where we are together regardless of race, religion, creed. We are so segmented in every layer of society now. Concerts are the one place where we go and overlap and mix and we're all there together to have the same shared experience of our favorite artist blowing our minds together.
So in ears are a tool to enable this joy and community and connection. And yet 25 years later in the headphone revolution and the everybody having unlimited access to every bit of content they want in their pocket in the world sealed off from reality and in their own world of bubble is exactly the opposite effect of what the intent of the tech was to begin with.
which is crazy, right? I know we've taken this to esoteric a but I want to stress that in ears are a net positive for live music and especially for the people who put shows on. In fact, Mike's upcoming documentary, Can I get a little more me? Is all about the folks who put shows on, their behind-the-scenes stories, and how they've contributed to in ears and live music at large.
Once I started filming the it's been a landslide of everybody jumping on and wanting to be part of it. Like it's a story that wants to be told. It has jumped out of my own head and now is everybody's story. Every band from Maluma to the Doobie Brothers, Blue Man Group, uh people who started Coachella. What I love is that it's completely international in scope. That's life.
That's the world we live in now. And that's the universe that we all music transcends the entire globe and people and regions. And I don't need to flatten that and translate that. It's been a real honor to get to put this together. It's been a labor of love. It's my love letter to the industry itself for everything that the industry's given me.
And I hope that it stands as my way of giving back. Can I get a little more me? is currently being edited, but if you want to learn more about it, you can check out its website linked in the description. And I want to hear from you now. Have you ever worn in ear monitors? Do you use them for work? Let me know in the comments.
And if you enjoy learning about the behind the scenes of live music, check out this video about what it really takes to be a roadie.
