Are cheap IEM's any good?

This is an unscientific look at cheaper IEMs - primarily the tone IEM100, to decide if they are ok for budget conscious musicians. Please do not take this vid as a recommendation to buy and note the considerations in the vid. Please make sure you do your own research and make your own decision. Enjoy!

[PrisvanieStepan]

Thank you ! Very useful! I'm just building my own mount rack.

[Bettys_Eldest]

Remember it's a monitor, not hifi. How good is the sound you get from your floor wedges with everything else going on. It's doesn't have to be perfect to be much better than floor monitors.
We have a couple of the even cheaper Thomann T-Bone 75s sets, and four wired sets of iems, running from a Behringer XR18 digital mixer into a six channel headphone amplifier. If we were to run more than two of these wireless sets we would risk problems with frequencies and interference. A more expensive set would be required if all six of us went wireless. It works for us, and it works well.
The choice of earbuds is important. We have tried Shure 215s, but most of us opted for CCA10s, fitted with the correct sized memory foam tips. The supplied silicone tips are okay for home use, but fail to properly isolate in a band setting.
The digital mixer gave us six monitor channels, rather than the 2/3 available on the old set-up. It makes so much difference for everyone to have their own monitor mix, which they can control themselves.
Since changing to iems our monitoring is much improved, we sing better in tune, don't damage our voices straining to hear ourselves, we have reduced on stage volumes, and front of house sound is so much cleaner as there is no need to fight against the output of the monitors.

[marksplasher]

I have the Ashsoton IEM250`s in Australia I paid $335. I have no other reference other than yours. Iam a weekend warrior so would love but dont need Shure.Waiting on some dual armature buds and yeah your right as long as you are getting decent signal its all about buds. Hearing yourself and reducing background noise is the whole point and they achieve that.I think the main thing is trust in brand reliablilty. Its not the end of the world if mine fail I have a quad box behind me.But if Beyonces fail no floor wedges.

[Cobanaut]

I have both Shure (expensive) & Ashton (1/3 the price of Shures) in my rack, & whilst there is a slight difference in audio quality & range (Shure takes top honours), it is not worth 3 x the price. I think having the cheaper solutions are great for musicians on a budget or just starting out playing in a band.
Of course now there's the XVive U4, which is inexpensive & space saving. Thanks for this demo.

[stevesheroan]

I find that on the cheaper units, the biggest issue I have is with the receiver’s output amp. They are almost always degrade the audio a bit and overload too easily.

[karolkozak]

I know this is an older video but i have a technical question. We have two units in my band. A tbone 100 and a tbone 75. Both running in the 864mhz range. Whichever channel we use they keep interferring with each other. To a point where its useless. Is the problem that they run on similar fq ranges? Should we get one in the 864 and one in say the 700 range?

[ldamkjar]

But … listening to your recordings - there is a HUGE difference. From daw it is stereo, and from iem100 it is mono. This Maker a huge difference. Why did you not computer stereo to stereo? I am curious

[StuffBudDuz]

But why are you testing between straight DAW output and the "cheap" IEM set? That's not a comparison between a cheap IEM set and an expensive IEM set. It's a comparison between an IEM set and direct output. Unless I'm misunderstanding your labels.

[natevirtual]

Funny how it says volume(n) in Spanish??

[ЧерепочкаНиндзя]

это не дешёвая система, просто у западных производителей цены завышены на свою продукцию

[calvingudu]

I think this video certainly has good value, but cheap I near monitors are simply a reliable source of stress, particularly when you start to run more than one of them. The interference is a total put off and for that reason alone I think expensive systems will only do. Cheaper systems are cheap for a this horrible reason. I have given up on the cheap ones. I actually have a total of 10 different brands including Anleon and LD which I am selling on eBay this weekend.