Well, I received my SRH940s yesterday.. along with my E7 and E9 DAC/amp combo..
 
I listened for a while to various music tracks.. plenty of female vocals, folk music, some banjo music and some rock.
 
They sounded good.. but I noticed that the rock didn't sound as "full" as the SRH840s until I cranked the volume up on my PC to around 70-80%.. 
 
After that, I hooked up the amp and docked the E7 and connected it to the usb hub built into my monitor.. and it was immediately recognized by my PC (currently running windows 8 dev preview) and it picked it up and made it the default audio device.
 
With the amp, I don't need to turn it up much at all.. and it sounds quite a bit better. It is hard to quantify it, though.. The comfort difference between the 940 and the 840 is more than enough to make me decide to keep the 940s.
 
I took the 940s off after a few hours and my ears felt perfectly fine.. whereas the same experience with the 840s would leave my ears hurting somewhat.
 
I can't really compare them to other headphones as these (and the 840s, which are being returned) are my first "good" headphones.. and they all sound better than what I used to use.. (A $49 plantronics headset from best buy)
 
I think this will do it for me for a while.. 
 

Baka,
Its a big difference though. The IEM is surely gonna be different by quite a bit because the lcd2 is not rolled off on top. In fact they are extended more than most cans. They are just a little recessed in the low treble thats all.
 

Right from the good folks at Headroom:
 
"Headphones also need to be rolled-off in the highs to compensate for the drivers being so close to the ear; a gently sloping flat line from 1kHz to about 8-10dB down at 20kHz is about right. You'll notice all headphone measurements have a lot of jagged ups & downs (peaks & valleys) in the high frequencies; this is normal and mostly due to reflection cancellations in the folds and ridges in the outer part of the ear. Ideally however, the ups and downs of the frequency response should be fairly small and average out to a flat line. "
 

Thats basically just a layman's description of why headphones are diffuse field equalized
 
But yah, the shures are more rolled off than Ideal.

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donunus said:

Thats basically just a layman's description of why headphones are diffuse field equalized
 
But yah, the shures are more rolled off than Ideal.

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That's not what I was getting at....
 
"need to be rolled-off in the highs to compensate for the drivers being so close to the ear; a gently sloping flat line from 1kHz to about 8-10dB"
 
The LCD-2 gets called with "rolled off highs" for following this exact design requirement. As you mentioned previously, the LCD-2's treble is actually extended up to 20kHz...more so than many other flagships, just that the treble is "pushed back" by design.
 
The SE530s and HD650s fall off a cliff past 12kHz.

I agree. It was Baka that said that the lcd2s were rolled off on top. This is why I was saying that the shures would have semmingly more bloom in the bass because of it.
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baka1969 said:

I don't disagree with that premise, however, the LCD2.1 has a quite similar FR and it's highs are also rolled. From my experience, even though I never had the SE530 and LCD2.1 together, the bass was, to me, better controlled and better extended on the LCD2.1. I can't help thinking that even though the 50Hz Square wave graph is similar between the two that one being a full sized headphone (planar) and the other an IEM might account for my perception.

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kiteki said:

 
Looking at that graph, apart from the spike around 9kHz there's not much treble emphasis on the SRH-940? Especialy compared to the SRH-840, they both measure the same, except for the 940 being more accurate above 11kHz.
 
So obviously the 940 isn't just "an 840 with boosted treble" as someone in this thread suggested.
 
Once again the 840 is crap compared to the 940 imho.
 
 

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I suggested that yes, from looking at Tyll's measurements as posted on Innerfidelity, which clearly show that the only signicant difference between the two headphones (of the things he measured) is frequency response.  If the 940 was a actually more detailed, faster, more resolving, etc I think it's measurements would at least have more differences from the 840.  A driver can't be moving faster and have an identical impulse response.

The square wave does show that the 940 has a faster rise time than the 840.
 

 
This could be the reason why they have a brighter sound. I've listened to both of them too by the way.

donunus said:

I agree. It was Baka that said that the lcd2s were rolled off on top. This is why I was saying that the shures would have semmingly more bloom in the bass because of it.
​

 
 

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I was referring to the LCD2.1 not the LCD2.2 which boosted the top end a bit.

 
Sorry, but if the measurements don't show the differences between the 840 and 940, the measurements are lacking / flawed.
 
 
There's a reason why people compare the 940 to very high-end headphones, which has never been the case with the 840, the differences between the 840 and 940 are clear during a listening session, so all similarity on paper tells me is the paperwork needs to be improved.
 

Quote:

kiteki said:

 
Sorry, but if the measurements don't show the differences between the 840 and 940, the measurements are lacking / flawed.
 
 
There's a reason why people compare the 940 to very high-end headphones, which has never been the case with the 840, the differences between the 840 and 940 are clear during a listening session, so all similarity on paper tells me is the paperwork needs to be improved.
 

Click to expand...

 
Serious statement here. It's absolutely true and a great observation. The SRH940 does get compared to higher tier headphones and equal tier headphones by people who have listened to them and not just waxed mathematical about graphs and numbers and never touched the headphone on the internet. Yet, you don't see this phenomenon with the SRH840. Hrm....
 
Very best,
 
 

kiteki said:

 
Sorry, but if the measurements don't show the differences between the 840 and 940, the measurements are lacking / flawed.
 
 
There's a reason why people compare the 940 to very high-end headphones, which has never been the case with the 840, the differences between the 840 and 940 are clear during a listening session, so all similarity on paper tells me is the paperwork needs to be improved.
 

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The review comparing the Shure 940 with the Senn HD800 by plugging them into an iPod was awfully flawed. I have both of the headphones along with three different amps and three sources that have headphone jacks. That's multiple combinations. The two aren't similar. The HD800 is a superior can. As well it should be. The 940 is a good 'phone for it's price and a very nice closed can. It's not in the class of flagship headphones available today. That review should be put in file 13.

Ok, I  moved and now I'm using a new pc , with only onboard sound.
I was not much impressed when testing my srh940 , out of my realtek alc889.
The sound was not that bad, but I was wondering if my much cheaper ksc75 was not better.
I got a hard time when comparing the sound of my onboard sound, with the sansa
clip.  I finally made the conclusion that the sansa clip have a better sound,
but it applies a low pass filter, or cut some high frequencies, to trick you ,
and let you believe that the sound is cleaner than it actually is.
I  don't think it's better built in amping, I  found the high a bit lacking.
Both my cowon s9, and my onboard realtek alc889  delivers a brighter
sound than my sansa clip.
So here's my new ranking regarding sources:
realtek alc889< sansa clip < cowon s9 < xonar stx

And I'll add if my ksc75 are as good as my srh940 out of my onbaord sound card,
then they are as good as the hd800. Just imagine the big bargain it is.
 I'm considering to get a fiio e7, so I can use it on my other computer.
 Obviously the onboard sound (even the supposed best onboard, realtek)
is not enough to let the srh940 shine.
 
 
EDIT: I used the front panel output to test the onboard realtek, I'm not sure it makes a big  difference.

baka1969 said:

kiteki said:

 
Sorry, but if the measurements don't show the differences between the 840 and 940, the measurements are lacking / flawed.
 
 
There's a reason why people compare the 940 to very high-end headphones, which has never been the case with the 840, the differences between the 840 and 940 are clear during a listening session, so all similarity on paper tells me is the paperwork needs to be improved.
 

Click to expand...

The review comparing the Shure 940 with the Senn HD800 by plugging them into an iPod was awfully flawed. I have both of the headphones along with three different amps and three sources that have headphone jacks. That's multiple combinations. The two aren't similar. The HD800 is a superior can. As well it should be. The 940 is a good 'phone for it's price and a very nice closed can. It's not in the class of flagship headphones available today. That review should be put in file 13.

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I have both headphones, and they are about equal. People here can rant day and night and fill this thread with 10 thousand denials (for whatever reason), but the facts are clear - when you list a specific track with a specific attribute to compare the two, I will check them with that track and report the obvious conclusion back to you. But you never do that because you know what the outcome will be. It's too bad for Sennheiser that Shure is eating their lunch with a 5 times cheaper headphone. Deal with it.

BTW, the person who repeats endlessly about plugging the 800 into an iPod should get a clue, soon. The review at Amazon clears that up, if you took time to read it.