IEMs Over WIFI? Is This The Future of Live Sound – Or Just A Gimmick?

Whenever someone wants to know why something from old sci-fi movies doesn’t exist yet in the current year, they always declare, “Why don’t we have (technology) yet? It’s (current year)!”. In my experience, this never causes the desired gadget to suddenly materialize, and just leaves you feeling like we’re living in the Dark Ages instead of Star Trek.

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So when I first heard about in-ear monitoring over wi-fi, I got a little bit excited. It’s 2020, we’re long past the timeline for many “future” scenarios predicted in sci-fi media, so why not? Why shouldn’t we be able to send perfect audio over the same bands we use to surf the internet and send selfies to strangers?

Audiofusion is the company responsible for this push to make the leap to sending audio over 5G wifi, using your iPhone as both the receiver and IEM mixer. This cuts out the need for a separate receiver pack and dedicated transmitter, which is replaced with a powerful, but off-the-shelf consumer-grade wi-fi router. An app for your computer called Soundcaster allows you to take the sound from your interface and send it to the iPhones of everyone in the band, using the phone app called Performer. Each person can then create their own personal IEM mix right on their phone.

Why do this over a traditional radio system? That’s easy – it’s around 1/5th of the cost. At $100 per person on the system, plus the cost of the router (the one I used was $300), it’s a fraction of the cost you’d pay for a typical system.

So this all sounds pretty cool, but does it actually work? That’s what we’re here for – to try it find out so you don’t have to! Watch the video above for an in-depth review, testing, and analysis, only right here on Gear Gods!

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As Editor-in-Chief of Gear Gods, I've been feeding your sick instrument fetishism and trying unsuccessfully to hide my own since 2013. I studied music on both coasts (Berklee and SSU) and now I'm just trying to put my degree to some use. That's a music degree, not an English one. I'm sure you noticed.

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