[Darren 68]

I am a monitor engineer who mixes a lot of In Ear Monitors. This is what I do with IEM mixes for singers. Most of the time I will have a seccond channel for the singers vocal IEM mix. This way I can change the eq and whatnot without affecting anyone else's mix but the singer. I used to just split the line to another channel but I would always have to do the same thing for the spare vocal. Now I use an aux bus through a plugin to route both the main vocal and spare to another channel. This way no matter what mic the singer is on it will have the same settings (eq. comp, etc.). This is similar to setting up an effect send/return except we are routing it back to a mono channel instead of an FX return. Here is what to do:

1) Choose an aux and name it "IEM Split" (or whatever you want) I will use aux 24 for this discussion.
2) Choose a channel on your console and also name it "IEM Split" (or whatever) I like to put it somewhere near the main and spare vocal.
3) Setup a mono plugin with the input from Aux 24. (digidesign's compressor works fine)
4) Set the output of the plugin to be your "IEM Split" channel
5) Turn "ON" and route your main and spare vocals to Aux 24 at 0db PRE FADER
6) Bypass the plugin (or use it if you like)

Now both you main and spare vocal will show up on a dedicated IEM channel. You can change the EQ, Comps, whatever. This trick will now give your singer consistency whenever they switch to the spare.