Can You Really Mix On In-ears?

If there was a monitoring system that was reliable, affordable and sounded the same everywhere, would you use it for mixing? Well, there is — and you probably already own it.

If you’re mixing in multiple studios, working on location, or dealing with an untreated room, monitoring consistency becomes your biggest challenge. Most engineers reach for headphones as the go‑to alternative, but there’s another solution that’s been hiding in plain sight: the same in‑ear monitors that revolutionised live sound. IEMs offer something that neither headphones nor most rooms can deliver — absolute consistency. While they might seem like stage gear, they’re solving monitoring problems that working engineers face daily, from mobile recording setups to critical listening in less‑than‑ideal spaces.

A Shifting Landscape

The way we monitor has changed dramatically over the past decade. Where once you might have worked primarily in a single, well‑treated control room, today’s reality often involves bouncing between project studios, hotel rooms during touring work, and home setups that range from purpose‑built to makeshift. Each environment brings its own acoustic compromises, and adapting your ears to these varying conditions can be exhausting and time‑consuming. Even worse, it introduces uncertainty into your decision‑making process at exactly the moments when you need confidence most.

My own journey into IEM mixing began almost by accident after seeing a compelling review on a trusted YouTube channel. The relatively low initial investment allowed me to experiment alongside my existing monitoring system, and the results were immediately positive enough to spark deeper research into what turned out to be an entire world of IEM technology. What started as curiosity about an alternative monitoring approach quickly revealed an ecosystem with decades of development behind it, driven primarily by the demanding requirements of live sound engineers and performing musicians.

Technical Advantages Of IEMs

The key difference with IEMs lies in how they couple to your ear. Unlike headphones, which create a variable air gap between driver and ear, IEMs sit directly in your ear canal. This eliminates the complex interactions between driver response and your individual ear geometry, which means you get reliable frequency response regardless of positioning or head movement.

This physical coupling also bypasses much of the HRTF (Head‑Related Transfer Function) that colours headphone reproduction. While this might initially sound like a disadvantage — after all, we’re used to hearing the world through our individual HRTF — it actually means the response you’re hearing is closer to what the drivers are producing. There’s less individual variation to account for. Which is one reason why IEMs translate well between different listeners once you understand their characteristics.

I’ve found this predictability transformative in practice. The learning curve with IEMs was surprisingly gentle compared to adapting to new rooms or headphones, likely because they’re inherently stable. After I’d established familiarity through reference playlist listening, and undergone careful experimentation before making any significant mix changes, the translation quality became reliably repeatable. Unlike headphones, where slight shifts in positioning can alter the sound, or rooms, where your listening position creates dramatic differences in what you hear, IEMs deliver the same response every time.

Beyond consistent response, IEMs offer another practical advantage that standard headphones struggle to match: sound isolation is superior to most headphones. Quality universal IEMs typically achieve 15‑25 dB of passive isolation, while custom‑moulded versions can reach 30dB or more. This enhanced acoustic sealing lets you listen critically at lower SPLs, reducing fatigue while revealing detail that external noise would otherwise mask. In practical terms, this means you can work effectively in environments that would be challenging with conventional monitors.

After years of transporting full‑sized headphones in their cases between sessions, having reference‑quality monitoring that fits in a pocket represents a meaningful improvement.

The portability factor is worth mentioning too. After years of transporting full‑sized headphones in their cases between sessions, having reference‑quality monitoring that fits in a pocket represents a meaningful improvement. The protective cases most IEMs ship with are typically no larger than a spectacles case, making them trivial to pack for any session or trip. This convenience factor shouldn’t be underestimated — monitoring you’ll actually bring with you is infinitely more useful than monitors left at home.

Practical...