Quote:
Probably you'd find more impressive bass with other headphones; but it's misleading to say that the srh940 have no bass. With a little eq, I can have sometimes massive bass.
Yeah but I wouldn't call it massive. Let me just explain my observations of SRH940 with my "massive bass" test.
First step: I set my equalizer with essentially a massive bass boost where bass is given a maximum boost and all mids and treble are almost completely removed. I listen to a particularly good deep bass beat in one of my FLAC songs, and I slowly turn my amplification up, starting from completely silent. My NFB12 can easily drive HD650s beyond deafening levels, so it's good enough I think.
SRH940. Starting silently, bass is not all that loud, but it is of course emphasized. Turning up to 8 oclock you hear the bass coming in, very clear and powerful enough. At 9 oclock the bass reaches its peak of impactfulness though, because as I turn it up past that point, the mids and treble come forward and the bass stays at the same intensity - and I can hear some distortion in the lower end that definitely doesn't sound like a clean signal. I don't turn it any further than 10 oclock because I don't want to damage it or my hearing.
HD650. Starting silently, bass is present, strong and very clear. Turning up to 9 oclock (keep in mind HD650 takes more power than SRH940), the bass comes in very strong as expected, and clearly much more impact than the SRH940 - with the 940 you can hear the bass, but with the 650 you can feel it. Turning up to 9 oclock, 10 oclock, the bass comes in stronger and stronger with no signs of distortion whatsoever. At 11 oclock it's a really powerful slamming thumping sound and feeling, very impressive. At 1 oclock it's quite literally vibrating on my head to the point where the earpads are tickling my head from the vibration, yet there is still absolutely no signs of distortion throughout the spectrum and clearly it could go louder (but I would probably damage my ears or reach the limits of my amp first).
So basically while the SRH940 has decent bass up to a certain volume, it is in no way what I'd consider "massive bass" like an HD650 can produce. Essentially, the SRH940 bass starts to clip at a certain volume. As long as you keep bass on the SRH940 below that volume it seems very controlled and acceptably impactful but it does start to clip rather quickly. The HD650 on the other hand seems to have virtually no limit in bass -- as long as you provide the signal, it will produce it -- and IMO has more accurate bass and without a doubt vastly more powerful "slam" and impact.
(Like I've said in the past, SRH940 dominates upper mids and treble. HD650 dominates the entire lower end. Each headphone cannot touch the other in their respective strong points, although to be honest the HD650's highs are closer in quality to the SRH940's highs, than the SRH940s bass is to the HD650s bass. Again none are clearly superior to the other, it just depends what you want.)
Back on topic:
So I guess this relates to the upcoming SRH-??? in that, I hope they can produce bass in league with the HD650 with these while retaining the detailed mids and highs as good or better than the SRH940. If they do, they'll have a flagship-killer, possibly. It is doubtful though, but I think it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
