Monitor wedge

A wedge is a loudspeaker lying on the stage floor on a slant, aimed up at whoever is standing in front of it. Each performer gets their own mix through it, because a singer wants their voice and a guitarist wants the kick drum.

Its limitation is feedback, and that is a geometry problem rather than a volume problem. A wedge is pointing at a microphone that is pointing back at it. Turn it up far enough and the loop closes and the system rings. The defence is a directional microphone with a null pointing exactly where the wedge is, and a wedge positioned to sit in that null — which is why wedges are placed on a plot rather than dragged into position by whoever is nearest.

This is also why a stage full of wedges gets harder to mix with every one added. Each wedge is heard by every open microphone, not only the one it is in front of, so the stage noise that the audience hears through the main system rises with the monitor count.

On a speech-driven corporate show the right number of wedges is often one or none, and the problem is solved with a well-placed microphone and a quiet stage instead.

Event audio production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• In-ear monitors (IEM) A personal monitor mix sent to a performer’s earpieces by radio — quieter stage, better mix, and one more set of frequencies that has to be coordinated alongside the microphones.
• Front of house (FOH) The mix position out in the room where the engineer sits, and the audio the audience actually hears — not a department, and not a place a venue should treat as spare seating.
• Gain structure Setting the level at each stage of the signal chain so the system runs well above its noise and well below its ceiling — the thing that is wrong when a mix sounds thin, noisy or brittle.