In-ear monitors solve the problem floor wedges create: every wedge on your stage is a speaker aimed at the back wall, and all that bouncing sound lands in the room and fights the mix your congregation is trying to hear. Switch the team to in-ears and each musician gets a personal mix with only what they need in it, the stage goes quiet, and the person mixing front of house finally controls what the room hears. In the episode above, Dave and Curtis walk through the whole setup, piece by piece, including the budget routes for churches that cannot buy everything at once.

Why wedges fight your mix

Every musician wants to hear something different. The keyboard player needs keys loud, the lead vocal, and maybe the drums. The vocalists need each other so they can harmonize. When all of that comes out of floor monitors, the stage volume adds up fast. Curtis puts it bluntly in the episode: with a full set of wedges running, you could pull your main fader down and the overall level in the room would barely change, because so much of what the congregation hears is monitor bounce instead of your actual mix.

He has demonstrated the difference at his Innovate Praise tech conferences. The same band played three sets, moving from floor monitors and stage amps to a fully quiet stage with in-ears and no amplifiers. The audience could hear the last set sounded dramatically better, because nothing on stage was competing with the house mix anymore.

A monitor mix is also a different mix. The keyboardist does not need the whole band, and piling in everything they ask for just raises the stage volume again. As Dave says in the episode, “This is just for you. We only want to hear what you need to function.”

The three pieces of an in-ear setup

1. The earbuds themselves

This is where the sound reaches the musician, and it is the wrong place to go cheap. Ten-dollar earbuds distort when you push them and make a good system sound bad, and then your team blames in-ears in general. You want multi-driver in-ears made for live use.

• Shure SE215, about $100: the common standard. Strong in the vocal range, good for guitars and keys, durable, with a replaceable cable. Bass players will want more low end than these give.
• KZ AS10, about $40 to $50: the budget pick Curtis actually uses on keys. Multi-driver, a little punchier in the low end than the SE215.
• Custom molds: an audiologist takes ear impressions for about $100, and companies like Ultimate Ears and 64 Audio build in-ears to fit only your ears. Total isolation and real comfort across a long Sunday, at prices that can climb into the thousands. Worth it for people who wear them every week, not required to get started.

One firm rule from the episode: keep over-ear headphones off the stage. A bassist in big cans looks disconnected from the room, and the worship team’s job is to lead the congregation, not look like they are performing in their own world. Curtis calls it the Princess Leia problem, and he is right.

2. A personal mixer for each musician

Personal monitoring systems give every player a small mixer that controls only their own ears. Aviom, Behringer PowerPlay, and Digital Audio Labs are the names you will run into. Which one belongs at your church is mostly decided by the board you already own:

• Behringer X32 or Midas board: Behringer PowerPlay is the natural match and the cheapest route in. Matching its sound and control elsewhere usually costs 30 to 40 percent more.
• Already running Dante: Digital Audio Labs speaks Dante and offers 24 channels. That channel count mattered at Curtis’s church, because PowerPlay and Aviom top out at 16.
• Allen & Heath board: they make their own system, or you can run PowerPlay through its analog input module and skip the premium mixer prices.

The signal reaches the stage over a standard ethernet cable. Two practical tips from the episode: feed the system with a splitter snake or direct outs from your board, and use a distribution module rather than daisy-chaining mixers down the line. A distributor powers the mixers over the ethernet cable, so there are no wall warts at every position, and one bad cable cannot take down everyone behind it.

3. Wireless, only for the people who move

Wireless in-ear packs are standalone units that take any feed you send them. Vocalists and worship leaders who walk the stage benefit, because nobody is dragging 30 feet of cable or pulling their ears out mid-song. Stationary players, keys, drums, bass, and guitars, can plug straight into their mixers and save the money. A wireless position runs about $700 to $800 once you count the sending unit, and every pack is another battery that can die on a Sunday. Curtis’s rule: “You want to have as many as you need but no more than you need.” When you do buy wireless, buy Shure. The half-price alternatives bring interference, dropouts, and hiss.

How to start when the budget is small

You do not have to convert the whole stage in one purchase. Buy the input module, a distributor, and a few mixers, and convert the loudest wedge positions first: keyboards, bass, drums, and electric guitars. Dave and Curtis’s church still runs a few wedges for the choir and horns, years into using in-ears. Players who want the same things can share one mix, the bassist and drummer together, or vocalists who harmonize. Add mixers in the following years as money allows.

The cheapest functional start is a Rolls personal in-ear amplifier, about $70 per player, fed from an aux send on your board. Your own mic or instrument passes through the unit, so you get a volume knob for yourself on top of a basic mix of everyone else. The cabling is messy. It works anyway, and it beats another year of wedges muddying your room while you save for the full system.

Whatever route you take, explain the change and the reason for it before the first Sunday. A team that understands why they are switching will work with you. A team that gets surprised by it will push back, and some of that pushback will be fair.

Frequently asked questions

Why do floor monitors make our sanctuary sound muddy?

Because each wedge is a speaker spraying sound at your back wall, and the bounce comes back into the room on top of your main mix. Enough wedges can rival the house system for sheer volume in the room, and the engineer ends up mixing against them instead of for the congregation.

Do we have to buy custom-molded in-ears?

No. Universal-fit models like the Shure SE215 at about $100, or the KZ AS10 at about $40 to $50, are legitimate starting points. Custom molds add isolation and comfort for people who wear in-ears for hours every week, and they can come later for the people who need them most.

Which personal monitoring system should we buy?

Start with your board. Behringer X32 and Midas owners should look at PowerPlay. Churches already running Dante should look at Digital Audio Labs, especially if 16 channels will pinch. Allen & Heath owners can use the Allen & Heath system or run PowerPlay through its input module for less money.

Who on our team actually needs wireless in-ears?

The people who move: vocalists and the worship leader. Everyone anchored to one spot can stay wired into their personal mixer, which sounds the same and skips the cost and the battery management.

We cannot afford a full system. What is the cheapest way to start?

Convert the loudest wedge positions first with a few personal mixers, share mixes where players want the same things, and keep the remaining wedges for now. The floor is a Rolls amplifier at about $70 per player off an aux send, which gets individual volume control into your team’s hands this month.

Can two musicians share one monitor mix?

Yes, when they genuinely need to hear the same things. Bass and drums often pair well, and so do vocalists singing harmony together. Sharing is one of the simplest ways to phase a system in on a small budget.

Prices are the ones named in the episode and can vary by retailer and sale. The product links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, and buying through them supports Church Media Creators at no extra cost to you. Dave and Curtis’s full walkthrough, including the systems they run in their own rooms, is in the video above.