Originally Posted by rzt:
“I was wondering, what do the contestants actually hear in their ear pieces?”
You "should" be able to hear whatever you want to in the earpiece.
Not patronising but I'll do the fuller version for people who don't know. Not too surprisingly if you can't hear your own voice, you can't pitch the notes correctly. Standing behind the speakers as you do on stage with the music blasting out you somethings can't hear a single note of what you are singing or it's at least too quite. However in front of the speakers the mix sounds wonderful for the audience and man on the mixing desk, so you can't just turn up your vocals so that you can hear them or they would be far too loud for the audience.
You get over this common problem by using those on stage monitor speakers (The wedge shaped ones that are pointing back towards the singer) There is a separate mixer (or a separate part of the main mixer, but I'll keep it simple) called "FOLDBACK" Foldback in basically how much you foldback to these on stage monitors. Normally it is just the vocals that are folded back so that you can here yourself, as the music track is normally loud enough from the main speakers anyway.
So you as the singer can ask for whatever you want and get the mixing engineer to adjust the volume levels during the soundcheck. "Can I have some more vocals on the foldback" is a standard phrase a singer will use. (Which means turn up my vocal on the monitor as I can't hear myself) - The sound out the fount to the audience is not your concern as the singer and is down to the sound engineer to get right (that his/she job) that's why at a concert the mixing dsk is out the front or at the back so the sound engineer can hear what's going on and adjust it) Or should do!
The in ear plug is just a wireless version of those monitor speakers. However, as they are plugging the whole ear up they sometime foldback some of the music to them as well as the vocals nice and loud so that you can hear what you are doing whilst leaving the sound out front mixed nicely for the audience. (This main sound out the front is also further mixed to be broadcast to us along with all the judges mics and audience mic. (Yes Boy does it get complex and that's just the sound - you also have to mix all the vision and tapes with yet more sound on them
)
But with them in your ears blasting the sound to you, you won't be able to hear and connect with the audience unless you are well practised with them. They can throw your whole game off. It's the same practising a song at home and getting it perfect but when you get to the Karaoke it sounds all different and puts you off to the point of singing it really crap.
But if you call yourself a professional singer you should be able to cope with all things - The best do and that is why they are the best!
I'll now read this back and try and remove all the typos!
Can you edit and put it in spoiler tags so at least some might miss this? Thanks.
Yes share them later, because they were good. 
