Althought I do not like the idea of being too "far away" from my audiences using one of these IEM, I confess that I see some advantages in using such a system. I do not like to carry aditional weight so I end up bringing only the main PA to my gigs (no monitors). In very noisy environments (ex: small bars where the people almost sit on my lap) I have troubles hearing myself, specially when playing romantic ballads. I feel that this affects my performance quite a bit. So, in these cases, a IEM could provide excellent quality monitoring and a little bit of "distance" from my audience, just enough to allow me to concentrate much better in a good and expressive interpretation. What has been keeping me from using these "earbuds" is the poor quality of the typical walkman headphones and, now that I read about IEMs, the huge price of these professional monitoring systems. So, in conclusion, I do not find these IEMs totally uninteresting; something to look up in a near future...

-- Jos�.