[extrabigmehdi]

Ok, I've played with different vst effects, and here's the most straightforward way to tame the brightness of the srh940, and get a pleasing sound:
Get the M7 impulse pack from rhythminmind.net , load the preset "Medium & Dark", inside a "compatible stereo reverb" vst (I use reverberate) , and adjust amount of effect (so that the sound remain natural) . Most people here won't probably care, as they don't play with vst, and prefer to mod thing or get other headphones, but I  really like the final result.
I  was surprised, but this helped to make the bass more forward ,  while keeping a lively sound.
 
@Accoun
Google the review of srh940, by headfonia, all your question regarding the pads are answered there.
 
 
 
 

 

[electropop]

 
 
Quote:

Just a few observations....bass lite does NOT equal more bass definition and bright (or more treble) does not equal more detail.
 
It does not indeed. But might help in many cases.
 
And with a total flat FR response, how is that monotonic? It reproduces bass down to 10Hz in a linear fashion. Again, if we focus more on the square wave responses:
 
Yes, it is quite mind boggling. It looks perfect on paper, so how should it struggle? 
 
So the LCD-2 can clearly reproduce the input square wave at 50Hz while the SRH-940 struggles....If these square wave responses were reproduced at frequencies from 20Hz to 800Hz...the LCD-2 would come out on top every time....far from "monotonic" bass. As well, I am unaware of any other headphone that can do this as well as the LCD-2s. You can personally listen to how well each bass note sounds with a standard frequency sweep...every note is bang on with the LCD-2s.
 
Again, I don't own the SRH940. I'm sure the LCD-2 does well with test tracks. I mostly listen to old recordings: modal jazz, progressive fusion etc. When there's a little more going on on a recording, the LCD-2 just seemed unable to play those teeny little nuances that turn out to be notes (with what I think is good equipment) instead of a note. Could be that my other equipment was lacking...
 
As I mentioned, the SRH940s are great buys for around $200, but I still had to struggle to hear the bass on all the recordings I listened to (and was very familiar with), and I found the treble a bit too much for me. But again, if you're in the "SRH940, ER-4P/S, and K701 sound the most natural to me camp", then we will have to simply agree to disagree.
 
I need to say it again: I don't listen to what's natural or neutral. I'm bad at that. I'm also bad at saying which presentation of timbre is most correct or if something is actually more or less bright than it should be... All I know is, the LCD-2 struggles playing high notes and harmonics of small brass and woodwinds. It's a "dark" headphone, you can't argue with that. No, bright does not equal more detail, but a drop-off suggests everything is not right.

 


Quote:

I've been a trumpet player for over 32 years and know the sound of the instrument quite well....and the LCD-2s reproduce the trumpet as well/better than any other headphones I've owned. I particularly liked how when Miles uses the straight mute, I didn't have to cringe with the higher notes like I normally do with my other headphones. Funny, in real life, I don't have to cringe either. 

 
Nice! I appreciate the instrument. A powerful and an expressive instrument it truly is.. My girlfriend plays it too! Yes, in real life you don't have to cringe, unless it's played next to your ear. With the LCD-2's you don't have to cringe, since you're not hearing anything, heh. (Ok, I'm overly exaggerating). What I meant was, that with the HD800, for instance, I didn't have to focus that hard to hear everything. (I'm trying to find that particular "scene" from Sketches of Spain where the LCD-2 fails, will come back to you with that. I believe it was the second or third track). I love that recording... Miles on flugelhorn with a harmon mute on that recording is the most exquisite lead role I've witnessed. 
 
The treble extension goes up to 20kHz, no detail is missing, just that it is pushed back further to account for the headphone drivers close proximity to your ears. I suggest maybe you give the Rev. 2s a try.
 
It does go up there and I understand the point for the compensation at 1kHz. I just think it's too steep, at least for my hearing and hearing everything up top. The HD800 have this compensation as well, but it might be well suited for my ear canals' physiology. I dunno 

 

Quote:

Sounds to me like you just like a basslight coloration.  Nothing wrong with that.  If a headphone has less lower bass, it will sound more "tuneful" because you are hearing more of the upper bass or even midrange/upper midrange of the bassy instrument and those frequencies have more of what you perceive as detail.  If you took the same headphone and EQ'd the bass lower, the bassy instruments would sound more "tuneful" or have more of a "note" as you're calling it.  But that doesn't mean it's actually faster or more accurate in any way.  It's not a coincidence that all the headphones you say have fast bass response are also basslight headphones, or at least on the basslight side of the spectrum.  The HD800 also does have fast response though of course.  But so does the LCD-2, the difference being that the LCD-2 has more quantity in general and more lower bass, which contains the least amount of "detail".   IME

As I previously stated, I don't mind coloration, or lack thereof. Nothing wrong with that I've heard expensive equipment that measure near perfectly, but are not what you call "tuneful". That might be a more clear definition of what I'm going after here, after having translated that to my native language... 
As you say, the LCD-2 has much more quantity than these bass-light cans of course. And the lower bass does contain so little musical information, or as you call, detail, that I would be perfectly happy without it. 
Your theory on why bass-shy headphones are more "tuneful" intrigues me. This is a quality I've witnessed in many headphones.. I don't claim that they are faster, but of course they are accurate if they can be more "tuneful". Distinguishing changes in pitch is very important to me and is everything in music. I don't listen to sound, I listen to music. If a headphone fails to be "tuneful" it isn't accurate in my opinion. But still, I will try to find something to study on this subject.. I don't buy your theory completely, but it may hold something. 
 
Might it also be, that the very lowest sounds that the LCD-2 produces, might be doing this to mask certain notes or frequencies?
 
We should move this discussion elsewhere probably
 
Anyway! Are the SRH940 tuneful?
 

 

[MacedonianHero]

/
Quote:

Sounds to me like you just like a basslight coloration.  Nothing wrong with that.  If a headphone has less lower bass, it will sound more "tuneful" because you are hearing more of the upper bass or even midrange/upper midrange of the bassy instrument and those frequencies have more of what you perceive as detail.  If you took the same headphone and EQ'd the bass lower, the bassy instruments would sound more "tuneful" or have more of a "note" as you're calling it.  But that doesn't mean it's actually faster or more accurate in any way.  It's not a coincidence that all the headphones you say have fast bass response are also basslight headphones, or at least on the basslight side of the spectrum.  The HD800 also does have fast response though of course.  But so does the LCD-2, the difference being that the LCD-2 has more quantity in general and more lower bass, which contains the least amount of "detail".   IME

Very well put (as usual). I am amazed at how many people prefer this "treble colouration" and prefer their headphones to sound so antiseptic and unlike what they'd hear in real life or what's recorded on the source (the very definition of "high fidelity")...but as the French say "Chacun a son gout". More treble and less bass may give the impression of more detail, but in fact its as you put it...a colouration. Sadly the SRH940 suffers from this to a certain extent.
 

 

[electropop]

Quote:

/

Very well put (as usual). I am amazed at how many people prefer this "treble colouration" and prefer their headphones to sound so antiseptic and unlike what they'd hear in real life. More treble and less bass can give the impression of more detail, but in fact its as you put it...a colouration. Sadly the SRH940 suffers from this to a certain extent.
 

 
Oh, do see my previous post
 
I agree with you, but do not suffer from this. I use my current speaker system as my reference for coloration (though as I said, I don't mind, if it's within acceptable limits). I use these for 80% of my music listening.. I haven't found more measurements, but they are very nice. 
 
Also, I have to make a point. Listening to an acoustic band live, say 5 persons, the bass (acoustic double bass, unamped), is usually the least audible. The cymbals or brass are the most intrusive usually. The LCD-2 turns this phenomenon over... Seeking a natural presentation is futile, since all recordings go through a mixing table of course. 

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

 
Oh, do see my previous post
 
I agree with you, but do not suffer from this. I use my current speaker system as my reference for coloration (though as I said, I don't mind, if it's within acceptable limits). I use these for 80% of my music listening.. I haven't found more measurements, but they are very nice. 
 
Also, I have to make a point. Listening to an acoustic band live, say 5 persons, the bass (acoustic double bass, unamped), is usually the least audible. The cymbals or brass are the most intrusive usually. The LCD-2 turns this phenomenon over... Seeking a natural presentation is futile, since all recordings go through a mixing table of course. 

I don't happen to fully agree with you on this...seeking a natural and true presentation is very important...if as you mentioned, that isn't what floats your boat, then that's fine...but that is not what the rest of us are after. I find the cymbals in perfect relationship to the other instruments...towards the very back of the sound stage...present, but not in front of the vocalist as the K701s and other such headphones would have us believe.
 
Again, I recommend that you give the LCD-2 Rev. 2s a try.
 

 

[rhythmdevils]

Quote:

/

Very well put (as usual). I am amazed at how many people prefer this "treble colouration" and prefer their headphones to sound so antiseptic and unlike what they'd hear in real life or what's recorded on the source (the very definition of "high fidelity")...but as the French say "Chacun a son gout". More treble and less bass may give the impression of more detail, but in fact its as you put it...a colouration. Sadly the SRH940 suffers from this to a certain extent.
 

I think an interesting question would be whether the 940 is actually more detailed than the 840, or if it just has more treble and less bass.  I haven't followed this thread as I'm not interested in a headphone with this type of sound, but I just compared the measurements of these two headphones on Innerfidelity and everything is almost exactly the same except for the frequency response.  The 840 actually has arguably a slightly better looking 30hz square wave response, but it's close to the same.  The 300hz SW and impulse response are almost exactly the same bump for bump.  Which means they must be the same headphone in most ways, and judging by measurements alone, the 940 isn't in fact "better" than the 840, but just a different flavor.  I may be missing something though, I'm not an expert. 
 
If this was discussed before, let me know I'll just delete this post...

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhythmdevils /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
 judging by measurements alone, the 940 isn't in fact "better" than the 840, but just a different flavor. 

The review from headfonia seem to suggest it's not the case:
Quote:

From a monitoring perspective, the SRH-940 is definitely an improvement over the SRH-840, and quite a big improvement too. Not only you get better clarity on the treble, but also very noticeable on the bass regions. For music listening, however, though vocal presence has been vastly improved, but the SRH-940 is dryer sounding than the SRH-840, so that’s something to keep in mind.

 
But bot the srh840 & srh940 use a 40 mm driver, perhaps the same tweaked differently.

 

[wind016]

 
Quote:

The review from headfonia seem to suggest it's not the case:
 
But bot the srh840 & srh940 use a 40 mm driver, perhaps the same tweaked differently.

What you quoted from Headfonia actually matches rhythmdevils' assumptions.
 

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

What you quoted from Headfonia actually matches rhythmdevils' assumptions.
 

Well I  read  "definitely an improvement"  in the sentence, although the "From a monitoring perspective"  part is confusing , because I'm not expert. Anyway, I've made the opposite conclusion by reading this.

 

[baka1969]

I think an interesting question would be whether the 940 is actually more detailed than the 840, or if it just has more treble and less bass.  I haven't followed this thread as I'm not interested in a headphone with this type of sound, but I just compared the measurements of these two headphones on Innerfidelity and everything is almost exactly the same except for the frequency response.  The 840 actually has arguably a slightly better looking 30hz square wave response, but it's close to the same.  The 300hz SW and impulse response are almost exactly the same bump for bump.  Which means they must be the same headphone in most ways, and judging by measurements alone, the 940 isn't in fact "better" than the 840, but just a different flavor.  I may be missing something though, I'm not an expert. 
 
If this was discussed before, let me know I'll just delete this post...

The drivers do appear to be very similar between the two. I think the largest difference the 940 and 840 have, to me, seems to be that mid bass region. Which I feel effects the rest of the sound signature. The overall construction, acoustically, also seems similar. Somewhere in this thread I posted pics of the drivers and the area that makes up the back of the cups. First of all the left cup and right cup, on both, are not the same as each other. The left and right are quite different acoustically. But both the 940 and 840 are like this. Neither headphone seems as if the cups are designed with sound as it's ultimate goal in mind. So the internals seem to be more similar to each other than the external aesthetics. I believe that the main difference between the drivers of the 940 and 840 are how they're tweaked. Especially in the bass region.

 

[rhythmdevils]

Quote:

Well I  read  "definitely an improvement"  in the sentence, although the "From a monitoring perspective"  part is confusing , because I'm not expert. Anyway, I've made the opposite conclusion by reading this.
 

I think 98.2% of the time when someone says "better clarity" in hifi, what they really mean is "more treble".  I don't see how the 940 could be a "vast improvement" when the square waves and impulse response are exactly the same.  If it was actually resolving more detail or actually had more clarity wouldn't the driver be moving at least slightly differently than the 840?  Frequency response is very important and so is tonality, so there's still plenty of reason to prefer one or the other.  But "better"?  "more detailed"? 

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

 So the internals seem to be more similar to each other than the external aesthetics. I believe that the main difference between the drivers of the 940 and 840 are how they're tweaked. Especially in the bass region.

So it could be the same driver, but the "housing" that leads to a different sound.  After all, everything matters, in the final sound.  I  don't see why the left and right would be "different acoustically".
 
 

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

  I don't see how the 940 could be a "vast improvement" when the square waves and impulse response are exactly the same.  [...]  But "better"?  "more detailed"? 

 
Actually I thought that the srh840 was better by looking at these graph, but at least the sdrh940 has a better design, and  is sold with a case.
Ok , maybe , it's just marketing, they are selling us the same thing, renewed in a way to let you think that it's better.
 

 

[MalVeauX]

Quote:

Quote:
 
Actually I thought that the srh840 was better by looking at these graph, but at least the sdrh940 has a better design, and  is sold with a case.
Ok , maybe , it's just marketing, they are selling us the same thing, renewed in a way to let you think that it's better.
 

If they were the same thing, they'd sound the same.
 
Why don't graphs show that?
 
Graphs don't determine the headphone.
 
Very best,
 
 
 

 

[TheWuss]

Quote:

If they were the same thing, they'd sound the same.
 
Why don't graphs show that?
 
Graphs don't determine the headphone.
 
Very best,

 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/ShureSRH940.pdf
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/ShureSRH840.pdf
 
 
To me, the graphs do diverge in a few important areas.
And these areas might explain the key differences (besides the frequency response).
 
First, when looking at the 30 Hz square wave, the 940 exhibits a stronger "overshooting" affect at the leading edge of the square wave.
 
(For a similar 30 Hz squarewave, see the K702:  http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AKGK701.pdf )
 
Also, take a look at the impulse response of the two headphones.
Similar, yes.  But not identical.
Once again, the newer 940 model exhibits a stronger response.  However, both headphones take a similar amount of time to "settle".
 
So, what can we learn?
That the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The 940 looks to be perhaps a slightly faster headphone.  Maybe??
And, this, combined with a more treble-leaning frequency response, gives a greater sense of detail and resolution.
 
cheers!
The wuss
 
edit:
and, oh, by the way - Tyll's videos really help explain the graphs and how to interpret them (for beginners like myself)...