Are there almost invisble earbuds to use to make music videos?

August 24, 2024 2:10 PM

I'm looking for an earbud (I don't even need two, one will be enough to guide me) to play background music in my ear while I video record myself singing while moving around.

In other words, I want to make music videos without lip synching. I pre-recorded the background music (which I wrote) and then want to sing "live" (without looking as if I am wearing headphones) and then merge the background music with the "live" vocal. I imagine 20,000,000 (or more) people do this every day, but I can't figure out how they do it without visible earbuds. Thank you!!

posted by DMelanogaster to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

"In ear monitors" is probably the search term you want. E.g. these (not a recommendation, just an example).
posted by quacks like a duck at 2:22 PM on August 24

quacks like a duck: I'm wondering why they're not using a wireless solution. I was thinking Bluetooth.
posted by DMelanogaster at 2:27 PM on August 24

I'm thinking I want to change my question to: what are the cheapest wireless ear buds in the world? (that work and won't break in five minutes)
posted by DMelanogaster at 2:32 PM on August 24

Fully wireless earbuds need to contain batteries, computing power and wireless comms gear. This means that they have to be quite a bit bigger than the wired ones, so they're not invisible. People do use "invisible" wireless setups, but the battery and the wireless gear is in a belt pack, so there's still a wire from the headset to the belt pack.

I don't know about cheap earbuds, but I hope that answers the questions about how other people might do it!
posted by quacks like a duck at 2:44 PM on August 24

Clear or flesh coloured in ear monitors with cables that exit at the top so the cables go over your ear, then you can run them down the back of your neck and the visual impact will be minimal (depending on your hair situation and the camera angle).
posted by ssg at 3:07 PM on August 24

I own a pair of beige Shokz OpenFit ear buds. People at work regularly start to talk to me when I am wearing them even if I point to my ears indicating I can’t talk at the moment. They are very unobtrusive and I have shortish hair that covers half my ears at best.
posted by koahiatamadl at 3:28 PM on August 24

Most pros who use unobtrusive earbuds run really hard-to-see wired IEMs like the ones quacks like a duck linked down to a battery/receiver pack on their belt. Consumer Bluetooth options are ones like this. (Pros use these.)
posted by supercres at 4:53 PM on August 24

I know this isn't the question you asked, but what's your mic solution? Getting good-sounding audio while you're moving around is also going to be an issue that will impact how well this works.

Related: Are you planning to use one device to record and one device to play your backing track? I think that's the only way I can see this working with phones/tablets, because I'm not aware of an easy way to record through one input while playing out through another on either iOS or Android (maybe with external mixing hardware, but that violates your "least expensive possible" dictum).
posted by Alterscape at 5:13 PM on August 24

Who is recording you while you're moving around? Some of the independent artists I watch who do live recordings have the camera person play the backing track on a boom-box (whatever the current terminology)
posted by mightshould at 3:20 AM on August 25

I have used these MEE Audio M6 wired earbuds for live broadcast before. They are less than $15 and fairly low-profile.

Method: The wire runs behind your ear, down the back of your neck, and under your clothing. Tape the cable at the nape of your neck with some medical tape, to secure while you dance around. Plug it into your phone (if needed get an adapter to convert to a phone plug since most phones don't have 1/8" headphones jacks any more). Phone goes in your pocket playing the backing track.
posted by hovey at 5:46 AM on August 25

I'm wondering why they're not using a wireless solution. I was thinking Bluetooth.

Bluetooth latency is generally not in acceptable ranges for live in ear monitoring (needs to be as close to 0 as possible; not sure of the current best case but Bluetooth can run well into hundreds of ms). For your use case I’m not sure this will matter since you can adjust the timing later though.
posted by advil at 8:19 AM on August 25

My band uses the Shure IEMs mentioned in an earlier comment. They are wireless in the sense that the audio signal is transmitted wirelessly to a belt pack with kind of inobtrusive earbuds plugged into the belt pack. But I don't think this is the solution for you. This isn't the first time you've asked a question like this, and again I think the solution is to play your music through whatever speakers that allow you to hear yourself in the location where you're filming yourself. Film yourself lip syncing to that audio coming through the speaker, then swap the live audio for the original recording of your song.
posted by emelenjr at 12:02 PM on August 25

To add a tiny thing to emelenjr's suggestion, note that "lip syncing" here doesn't need to mean merely moving your mouth and pretending to sing. Since you'd be discarding the live audio completely, you can actually go ahead and sing for real, as long as you stay in sync with your recorded version. (I'm bothering to write this on the off chance that your objection to lip syncing might be because it'll look phony.)
posted by nobody at 10:03 PM on August 25

nobody: WON'T it always look phony when there are two versions of the singing? Even if I'm "really" singing and not mouthing the words, when I've tried this before it looks awful! There is just too much difference between the two recordings. This is why I want something in my ears to guide me, so that the one recording I make "in vivo" will synch with the background instruments.
posted by DMelanogaster at 11:45 AM on August 30