Monitor Mix Planning Chart

The model is simple: one mix per instrumentalist, one per two vocalists where they are willing to share, and one for the drummer. Vocalists who will not share, which is common once in-ears arrive, each take their own.

The counts this site specifies alongside console size and wireless channels, so the three numbers agree with each other and with the sanctuary size pages.

The arithmetic that decides the delivery method. Wedges have a low cost per mix and a high cost in stage volume. Wireless in-ears are excellent and scale badly. Wired personal mixers scale well and tie the musician to a cable.

Every wedge on a platform is a loudspeaker aimed at a congregation’s ears, just indirectly. Its energy reaches the room, it reaches every open microphone, and it sets a floor below which the house mix cannot go. A church that cannot get its service below 95 dBA often has a house system that is perfectly capable and a platform that is making 90 dBA on its own.

The compounding problem is that wedges cause more wedges. A guitarist turns up to hear over the drums, so the singer turns up to hear over the guitarist, so the keyboard player turns up, and within a month the platform is running 10 dB louder than it was with nobody having made a decision. This is the single most common reason church sound gets worse over time without any equipment changing.

In-ear monitoring breaks the cycle properly. It removes the loudspeakers from the platform entirely, which lowers the room level, raises gain before feedback on every open microphone, and gives each musician exactly what they asked for. It is the largest single improvement most churches can make, and it costs less than a loudspeaker upgrade.

The costs are real and worth stating. Musicians lose the physical feel of the room and often feel disconnected from the congregation, which matters pastorally in a way it does not at a concert. Isolation means a vocalist can no longer hear the congregation singing, so an ambience microphone feeding the in-ear mixes is not optional. And the level inside a sealed earphone is set by the musician and metered by nobody, so a church can run a controlled 92 dBA room while a vocalist runs 105 dBA in their ears. Set a house limit and mean it.

It counts mixes, not buses. A console needs one output bus per mix, and those buses compete with the overflow feed, the cry room feed, the livestream send and the recording send. A church with eight monitor mixes and four auxiliary feeds needs twelve buses before the mains, which rules out a large number of otherwise suitable consoles. Check bus count against the mixer channel count chart.

Stereo in-ear mixes consume two buses each, not one. This catches churches out constantly. Eight stereo in-ear mixes is sixteen buses, which is beyond most mid-range consoles. Many churches run in-ears in mono for exactly this reason, and most musicians accept it.

Wireless in-ears compete with wireless microphones for spectrum. They are not a separate pool. An in-ear transmitter occupies a UHF channel, transmits continuously and usually at higher power than a microphone. Plan them in one frequency map with the microphones, as set out in the wireless channel count chart.

It says nothing about who mixes the monitors. Eight mixes adjusted from the house console during a service is more than one volunteer can do while also mixing the room. Personal mixers hand that job to the musicians, which is their real advantage over aux-fed wedges and matters more than the cost difference.

The model assumes willing sharing. Two vocalists sharing a wedge works. Two vocalists sharing an in-ear mix does not, because each wants their own voice at their own level. Expect the mix count to rise when a church moves to in-ears even though the band has not changed.