- In-ear monitoring is a crucial tool
for modern worship bands.
But it can be tough finding an in-ear monitor system
that's both affordable and sounds great.
Well in this video you're going to learn about
the Behringer P1 Personal In-ear Monitor Amplifier.
I'm going to cover all the pros and cons of this tool
and how it just might be what you need
to convert your whole band over to in-ears
without breaking the bank, coming up.
(melodious instrumental music)
This video is brought to you by Worship Leader School
where you're going to find all the essential training
advice and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Just click the link in the description
or go to worshipleaderschool.com to learn more.
My name is Jake Gosselin,
I'm the creator of churchfront.com,
helping you lead Gospel-centered and tech-savvy worship.
If you haven't already, consider subscribing to the channel
so you don't miss out on any of our latest content
to help you grow yourself and grow your church.
And also be sure to check out
the show notes below this video
for a link to this nifty little tool
we're going to talk about today,
the Behringer P1 Personal In-ear Monitor Amplifier.
So first let's talk about the hardware.
It's a little black box,
you can see how big it is in relation to my hand.
It kind of looks like a DI box
but this is for in-ear monitoring.
So on one side you have volume control and panning control,
you have a headphone output right here
and then you have a mono or stereo
selector button right there.
And then on the other side of it,
this is where you have your XLR inputs
where you're going to be plugging in your monitor mixes.
And since you have the ability to plug in two mixes,
you can either have a stereo mix
with the left and right inputs
or you could have two mono mixes.
When you are in mono mode
and you're sending in two separate mixes into this pack
you can actually control which mix you hear more of
by panning either to the left or right.
Left, you'll hear more of mono mix one
and right, you'll hear more of mono mix two.
You also have a spot to put a battery in this guy
so it can be either battery powered with a 9-volt battery
or it can be powered by adapter that you can plug into it.
But you can use a battery and from my understanding
the battery power lasts a really long time,
like 12 hours or something like that.
So you just got to remember to turn it off when you're done.
And lastly I want to highlight the other side of the pack
that has the belt clip on it
so you can literally wear this thing.
And then it also has a little place
that you could mount it on like a microphone stand,
could screw something in there.
So really cool piece of hardware.
And here's how this works
and of course I'm talking about
how you'd want this to work in a worship band environment.
We want to have in-ear monitoring
so we can hear ourselves better,
we can also use a click and tracks
and you know we have the click just going to our ears
and to the PA system or the floor wedges
because that would sound horrible.
So the goal is to send your band members
their own individual mixes.
And here's how we set this up at our church plan.
So we have a digital mixer that M32
but it's very similar to the X32
or even lower-priced digital boards.
And that's kind of my first tip is hopefully by now
your church has upgraded to a digital console.
They have become so, so much more affordable
in the past couple years,
you can get one for less than a thousand dollars.
So if you have a digital console,
that's one big thing
that's going to help you get this set up.
And then also if you have a digital snake
that goes along with that digital console.
So for the Behringer or Midas boards, the X32 or M32,
you can get the S16 or S32 snake
which is going to allow you to have plenty of XLR outputs
or return channels to your stage.
And this is where a lot of people kind of get tripped up
in this whole in-ear monitoring concept
and building an in-ear monitor system.
The key is, you need to have separate mixes
and separate feeds sent to your stage
for all the individual mixes you want for your band members.
So I always recommend if you can get the X32 digital console
with the S16 snake or S32 snake,
it's gonna make your life so, so much easier.
And then for in-ear monitoring
all you have to do is spend 50 bucks a piece
on these little headphone amplifiers
that each of your band members can wear.
And you'll have plenty of outputs to send them either
mono mixes or you can give them each a stereo mix.
So we just set this up at our church for our drummer Luke.
I use wireless in-ears,
we also have the headphone amplifier
that sends mono in your mixes.
But what really intrigued me about this is
the ability to give like our drummer or our keyboardist,
people who aren't moving a lot on stage a stereo in ear mix,
it's just gonna sound a lot clearer for them.
So all I had to do to set this up
was I went to our M32 digital console
and in our mix bus output section,
that's the monitor mixes we sent to the band.
I created two mix bus outputs
that were going to be dedicated to the drummer
and I linked them together,
so they're actually just going to be a stereo
left and right mix.
And then what happens is those two mix bus outputs
are routed from our digital console
through the digital Cat5 cable
to the S32 snake that we have onstage.
And then we have all those XLR outputs that are available
for sending signals to our musicians on stage.
So then all I had to do is find a couple
extra XLR cables we had lying around
and plug one end into the S16 stage box
coming out of the appropriate outputs there
to match up with the mixed buses
that I just assigned at the board.
And then I plugged the other end of those XLR cables
into this in-ear monitor pack.
And then from there you just turn it on,
my drummer Luke just plugs in his headphones
in the headphone output here on the pack
and he's ready to roll with a stereo in-ear monitor mix.
And the benefits of the stereo mix versus a mono mix is that
now when Luke is using the M32-Q app to dial in his in-ears,
so he can actually use the stereo feature now.
So maybe he wants the click on the left
and the guide cues on the right
or he wants to put the guitars on one side
and the tracks on the other side.
So it gives you a lot more control
and you're going to be able to start hearing things
a lot more clearly with a stereo in-ear monitor mix.
So here's what my drummer Luke had to say
after using this guy for the first time.
- So crystal clear, it's like night and day.
You can tell a huge difference
just being able to pan different things
to which side of your ear you would like it in.
Like for example I had Jake's acoustic
completely in my right ear
because I didn't really want him in my left.
So it was just little things like that
that just made it, that just did such a difference.
- [Jake] Good job.
- Thank you.
- So in conclusion, here's a few more tips
for helping you decide whether or not this is a good fit
for you or for certain band members in your worship team.
So I think this is ideal for band members
who aren't moving around a lot.
I prefer as a worship leader a wireless solution
because it would be a little bit cumbersome
to have two XLRs running into this guy
and I'm like standing and walking around and jumping around,
whatever I'm doing during worship.
As well as like I already had my guitar cable,
I'm going out as well,
so I'd have like three cables
I'd be dragging around on stage
and it could be really a cluster really quickly.
So I recommend this for like drummers or keyboardist
or people who are like at really fixed locations on stage.
And before you go buying a bunch of these things,
make sure that you have
the right sound system in place already.
I highly, highly recommend
getting an affordable digital console.
You don't have to spend more than a thousand
or two thousand dollars in most cases.
In a long side on that digital console,
I highly recommend getting a digital snake
like the S16 or S32 or any of the comparable
digital console and snake setups that you see from
Yamaha or PreSonus or Allen & Heath.
Because this little guy works best
when you have plenty of available monitor mixes
that you can actually send to it via XLR cables.
I put a link in the description of this video
so you can check out and purchase the Behringer P1.
I highly recommend it.
It really does feel like that's a pretty solid build quality
even for being a Behringer product,
they've come a long way in the last few years
after partnering with Midas.
Let me know and others watching this video
what your experience has been with the Behringer P1.
Just leave a comment below with your love or hate
for this piece of hardware that will help us
all be more informed before we go ahead and purchase it.
Finally, I would encourage you
to check out Worship Leader School,
where you're gonna find all the essential training advice
and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Visit worshipleaderschool.com
or click the link in the description of this video.
Thanks so much for watching.
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