[headinclouds]

In the top headphone market another product the  Americans should be proud of is the Shure SRH-1840.  
 
Having owned several high end offerings (T1, HD800, LCD2) the phone I enjoy the most is the Shure.
I find that listening through these I am singing along or tapping my toes, etc.   They really get you involved in the music.  The clarity of vocals and guitars for example is a great help.  They have a lively “propulsive” quality which captures the pace and energy in music.
I don’t claim that frequency response graphs tell the whole story but if you compare the published graphs of many other favoured ‘phones with the SRH 1840, the Shure has the flattest frequency response from 30 to 3,000Hz, extending into the all-important midrange better than HiFiman, Audeze and Sennheiser HD800 for example.
My system to drive these has evolved to an Arcam D33 dac and my trusty Borbely all FET class-A amp.  Sources are  mainly lossless flac files of my CDs and CD player as transport.  The musical results are simply enjoyable, all sorts of music comes alive.
 
Incidentally the Borbely amp is pretty wonderful but quite rare, Erno Borbely has retired now but his circuits are still out there and completed Borbely amps are made in the USA by Les Bordelon : http://www.lbaudiosystems.com.
 
I  recently embarked on the quest for an electrostatic system and am building a KGSShv to power a Stax SR-507.  I look forward to listening to this new system.  Which will get the most time on my head? 

 

[TMRaven]

If it's using the inner fidelity graphs, then remaining flat out to 3khz is actually a bad thing.  A flat headphone needs a little rolloff starting at around 1-2khz.  I'm not sure that a bass rolloff constitutes for flat either.
 
Also, the audio-technica AD900 sports nearly the same frequency graph for nearly 1/4th the price, and without the massive distortion from mids-downwards.  Not that those graphs mean anything, because it's almost guaranteed someone will come in here and preach about how they don't.

 

[headinclouds]

Having taken another look at the FR published on Inner fidelity I should correct myself. 
 
The frequency response is about 5dB down at 30Hz and extends pretty flat to be 5dB down at 4500 Hz.  I think this is excellent.  Who says being flat out to 3,000 or 4,000 is a bad thing?
 
I was merely pointing out that it sounds best to me.  A common criticism of the Audeze and HD800 is in the midrange where IMO both have weaknesses.
 
Thank you for drawing my attention to the ATH AD900 (I have not heard them).  However I don't agree that it has nearly the same FR.  it drops away 5dB between 1500Hz  to 2500Hz  whereas my point is that I feel the SRH-1840 maintains a consistent output throughout a very important part of the range.
 
 
Happy listening

 

[TMRaven]

I'm not sure where you're getting that both LCD-2 and HD800 have weakness in their mids.  As much as I hate the HD800, I'm going to say that its midrange reproduction is its strongest asset.  I've not heard the LCD-2, but people also say its midrange is perhaps its strongest aspect, because of its strong realism.  The weakness of both the LCD-2 and HD800 is treble. HD800 has too much of it, LCD-2 has too little of it.
 
Being flat out to 3-4khz is a bad thing for the inner-fidelity graphs.  That's just the way they work.  Read Tyll's thoughts on the LCD-2 when he compared them a while back.
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/comparing-world-class-headphones-audeze-lcd-2
 
'Ideal to 4khz' is what he says.  
 
Likewise, take a look at other measurements.  Purrin's graphs for instance, which are compensated to the point where what's flat on his graphs is flat the way we hear it.  What's flat to 3-4khz on an inner-fidelity graph shows as a hump in the 3-4khz range on Purrin's graphs.  The 1840 is no exception.
 
 
This is all just talk over objective measurements though.  If something with a forward upper-midrange sounds good to you, then that's what you should strive for.

 

[3rdear]

Quote:

This is all just talk over objective measurements though.  If something with a forward upper-midrange sounds good to you, then that's what you should strive for.

This is probably what he was referring to when he said the LCD/HD800 had weak mids.  It's the upper mid to lower treble area that gets tricky.  I don't know much about the HD800, but the LCD2s are generally better sounding with male vocals than females where those areas cross and intersect.