New here. Question about the safety of in ear monitor.

[Alex Herrera]

I'm new here hello everyone. I play saxophone in a group here in my town and decided to start using in ear monitor. I bought the Behringer powerplay p1, the one where I get to control the volume with my headphones or ear buds connected, sweetwater states that it also has a built-in limiter to protect your hearing. I am pretty nervous using it since I read about Luis Miguel having a incident where his in ear monitor damaged his ear from a malfunction in the system where the was a loud boom and caused him permanent tinnitus. My question is with the equipment that I purchased. Can that happened to me with the Behringer system that I have or did this happened to him because he didn't have volume control? Thanks in advance.

 

[Paul Johnson]

I know you've mentioned these devices in another topic - but purely on the safety aspect. You will soon find out with IEMs, especially the sealed mould types that ANY click can be painful, and plugging in a guitar or mic, or even the drummer smacking the snare mic can be horrible. hence most people run limiters on their monitors, and monitors close in can be just as bad if they are powerful and near your ears - like some sit down keyboard players use them. If anybody squirts uncontrolled noise into a sealed ear canal it can hurt, but this is why you really need decent kit - to minimise the risk. The good news is that battery powered devices like the Behringer might not be able to generate the same SPL as you'd get a few feet from a monitor fed with umpteen hundred Watts of amp0 power. Normally, you don't have the gain knob turned up that high anyway - so damage is always possible, but perhaps no worse than a loud monitor.