Don Poythress is a Nashville, Tennessee-based singer, songwriter, and worship leader at Abundant Life Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. He has hearing loss and struggled with using in-ear monitors, which made him feel cut off from the congregation. Then he learned about the 3DME active ambient in-ear monitors from ASI Audio. He says the technology has been life changing as he now feels reconnected to those singing in church while he leads worship.
As a worship leader I hated feeling separated from the audience. Especially when I was trying to talk to them.
“As a worship leader I hated feeling separated from the audience. Especially when I was trying to talk to them. The difference is when you just use regular in-ear monitors it feels like you’re isolated in the studio. But when you’re wanting to play live and feel live and you feel that separation, especially as a worship leader, it just doesn’t feel natural,” he says.
A friend introduced him to the 3DME, which has adjustable external microphones built into the ear buds—a technology ASI Audio has patented along with its partner firm, Sensaphonics. “I remember that moment I started singing and I had the ambient sound down just using the monitor, I was leading worship and I started popping that positive button on my belt and the ambient sound started filling up and all of a sudden it felt like I was playing live again, and it’s such an amazing feeling to feel like you’re playing live. I absolutely love it,” Poythress adds.
Join us for this discussion of the 3DME Active Ambient In-ear Monitoring System from ASI Audio with Dr Michael Santucci, founder of Sensaphonics and parter in ASI Audio, along with ASCAP and Dove Award-winning songwriter and Nashville-based worship leader, Don Poythress.
For years, big touring acts have benefited from the Sensaphonics 3D ambient audio in-ear monitoring system, which also features external microphones that are designed so that musicians don’t have to take one earphone out to hear ambient sound around them. But the custom version from Sensaphonics was expensive—$2,000 to $2,500 per set. The ASI Audio 3DME is a universal-fit version that’s available at a fraction of the price ($699 List Price). Dr. Michael Santucci, an audiologist and founder of Sensaphonics, partnered with Think-A-Move, a company making headsets for high-noise applications, and formed ASI Audio to create the 3DME. “We had musicians who would come to us and wanted the 3D,” Santucci says. “But it was rather expensive, which left out a big part of the market and the church market.
The 3DME is a less expensive, universal fit version of the original 3D from Sensaphonics.” The 3DME features the universal ear buds with integrated external micophones, a belt pack with overall volume control and the level for the ambient microphones, plus a user-friendly app that offers additional customizable controls. The app includes a seven-band EQ that offer 12 dB of gain, up or down (24 dB total), mic level, limiter threshold, left/right level control, and numerous other functions, including several customizable preset configurations. For Poythress, it means he can adjust the settings to hear everything better and send more sound through his good ear. He says his performing, song writing, and worship leading have all benefitted.
“I had about four or five hearing mechanisms I was trying to use for different things, whether it was a writing session, whether I was leading worship or singing at a café. But the 3DME works for everything,” he says.
