[Chodi]

 
That more "3D" is just a cut on bass. SE846 are designed to work best with street devs like iphone, I know what im saying as I have true 0Ohm ouput impedance devices I use.
If you have 0 impedance at output, to make response flat on SE846 you need to add 6Ohm "silencer" for each channel.  Reason for it is that most of devices do not have zero output and shure decided to match best the biggest statistic. Root cause is a plenty of current needed to keep the stream and drying batteries fast (its just phisics), on other hand JH16 pairs best with near zero output, the bass of JH16 just makes SE846 looking like some $10 earbuds. Solution is simple - using zero ouput dac? Set silencer of 6-4Ohm at output and enjoy top iems
 
Its all about good pairing, unfortunately, street low impedance earphones are hard to control.
 
If you wanna experiment, buy variable silencer (you can also use variable splitter) and adjust outputs to see the best match, then use meter to check resistance on silencer.

I use my 846 with an Auralic Taurus. The output impedance is less than 1 ohm. The sound is glorious. I own several other amps and I played with ohm adapters. Of course it changes the frequency response and you may like what it does. I did not like it with any amp I own. The 846 works best  with a source having 1 ohm or less. It also works with higher ohm output it will change the sound. If you like that go for it. Someone here that posts often has a Pono with 4 ohm output and loves the results. It is all personal taste.

 

[lisztian420]

This pag3 is gold. From my experience shure cable sounds better than upgraded cables with higher impedance.

So quick question, what is the ideal impedance range for Shure 846 if one is to consider getting a custom cable??

 

[Chodi]

This pag3 is gold. From my experience shure cable sounds better than upgraded cables with higher impedance.

So quick question, what is the ideal impedance range for Shure 846 if one is to consider getting a custom cable??

​A source with less than 1 ohm output impedance is recommended. I am not aware that any cable manufacturers specify the impedance of their cables.

 

[lisztian420]

Ok. Thanks Chodi. So best to audition each cable myself.

 

[piotrekfronc]

​A source with less than 1 ohm output impedance is recommended. I am not aware that any cable manufacturers specify the impedance of their cables.

Thats not true, shure flat response is at 4ohms
They designed it for crowd devices. Thats why there is wow factor.

 

[piotrekfronc]

Thats not true, shure flat response is at 4ohms
They designed it for crowd devices. Thats why there is wow factor.

My advise is... Buy a silencer with variable impedance and you will hear what i mean. If you put zero ohms you will boost highs drastically.

 

[Chodi]

Thats not true, shure flat response is at 4ohms
They designed it for crowd devices. Thats why there is wow factor.

I don't want to get into an argument about about this but I wonder where you get your information? This new information about how Shure designed the 846 for "crowd devices" is interesting but is it true? Do you work for Shure? I doubt even if that were true that they would let such a fact outside for public consumption. 
 
Do you have a source for this information?
 
I just thought I would share this information:
 

The SE846s are a 9 ohm, multi-balanced armature design meaning that you’ve got wide-ranging impedances that may easily dip below 9 ohms in spots and soar higher in other spots. That means you need to be really careful about matching the SE846 with the right devices – namely those with output impedance <1 ohm and ideally closer to 0 ohms (like 0.1 ohm). Failing to correctly pair the SE846s can result in extremely rolled off treble and the sense that you’re listening to a highly flawed product.

 

[goodvibes]

I just looked at the Freq response and impedance curves and it should work best when driven by a low impedance source. The impedance curve is remarkably flat for a multi armature device. It's about 16 ohms below 100HZ and at the very top with a dip down to 4 ohms centered at 4kHZ. Looks like Shure takes their measurement at 500hz which is nor uncommon. It does not vary by more than a factor of 2 from that spec. The output at 4k is already less than that of their previous flagships. A high impedance source will only make it deviate more greatly from what was likely their frequency response intent. We're also talking a maximum deviation due to source impedance of only a few DB without affecting overall bandwidth. The very top end does not roll due to source impedance as is often seen with other multi BA devices. You can also see the their previous flagship devices would be affected much more by source impedance than the 846. They drop almost as low with a greater impedance variance.


I did find it odd that they made an IEM with this low of an impedance when designing a ground up device and with their resources but it actually doesn't drop to anything significantly lower that what they've done in the past and its variance is relatively small. 

 

[piotrekfronc]

I did test it with near zero impedance and there is bass drop and highs up. Im not from shure, just try for your self and you will see what i mean. At 9ohm resistance the had to set appropriate proportions and believe it or not shure is making money company and must target iphones. At zero they sound awesome but you must check against 3-4 ohms to see what i mean. Its something odd i have plenty of iems, jh16 has similar impedance but jh16 at zero output... Is just something that must be heard to believe

 

[castleofargh]

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/ShureSE846BlueFilterSample2.pdf   look at the "electrical impedance and phase" graph, the impedance is the pink trace.
 
about the same measure from goldenears, impedance is the lower curve and the impedance value on the left:

 
so except the rise in the treble that is stiffer on one measure than the other(from my own messing around, it's hard to get anything reliable and changing the value of the resistor used for the measurement can impact this, so maybe they actually are showing an IEM with the same specs).
anyway given the signature of the 846, a little more boost past 15khz isn't going to matter much, so what's important IMO is the curve going down from bass to 5khz.
 
for people not too confident with electricity, you can still get an idea of what is happening by imagining that the curve is the shape of your EQ. if you use a close to zero ohm impedance source, the EQ would be flat, if you use a source of several ohms, then imagine you're applying and EQ with the shape of the impedance curve.  and of course with slightly lower impedance you would get something in between flat and that curve.
edit: some times back I had posted this to try and illustrate what could happen to the 846's signature when changing the impedance, it's not precise(any slight error in the reading of impedance values lead to some massive changes, but the direction and magnitude should not be too far off. you can get an idea of what I said with the impedance curve as EQ trick: http://www.head-fi.org/t/663180/shure-se846-a-new-in-ear-flagship-from-shure-finally-impressions-p26-28/3105#post_11468047
 
 
 
this trick doesn't tell you how much db you will gain or lose at different frequencies(you need ohm's law for that), but it does give you the shape and general direction of the change. here adding impedance(several ohm instead of 0.5ohm) will make the shure to sound warmer.
 
 
now what was the IEM using as a source when the guys engineered it? you could go asking this for all IEMs and go mad from not getting much answers ^_^. just know that between impedance and filters you have a pretty wild range of signatures you could use.
the little problem I can see is that most consumer sources are made to be ok driving loads(headphones/IEMs) from the usual 16-300ohm. this IEM goes as low as 5ohm! so it's likely that a few devices will perform less than ideally with the shure plugged into them. sadly I have no magic answer about that, we would need to measure the DAP with such a low load to know (or listen and find something isn't right is the problem is massive). and nobody goes measuring DAPs or amps with a 5ohm load on the web as far as I know.

last time I saw something on the subject it was http://www.jensign.com/S4Distortion/  where the cellphone distorted into low impedance at low volume levels even though it was a lower impedance output than usual(luckily the problem has been fixed).
but I doubt it's an isolated problem with super low impedance IEMs. to some sources, 5ohm starts to look like a short circuit and all the energy now has to be dissipated by the amp itself.
IMO any manufacturer of portable gears should give specs into 8ohm nowadays instead of sticking to 16 or 32ohm as if no IEM ever went below those numbers. but that's just me day dreaming that manufacturers would do the obvious things. ^_^
 
anyway, adding a few ohm to a troubled source (with resistors in the cable for example) will make the shure warmer, that is a fact, but it might also make the source's life easier as it would now have to drive the shure+the added resistor. so it all depends on the source, for one that works fine it's IMO messing up the shure's signature making it too warm(but that's a matter of taste). for sources that you feel sound better when you use a higher impedance IEM, maybe try to get a resistor adapter or some old school volume attenuator(but that might have greater channel imbalance) and then maybe EQ to go back to something closer to the signature you prefer?
hard to just guess stuff without measurements. most of the time only crosstalk becomes real poor when the IEM is low impedance(and we don't notice unless it's like -30db or something really really poor), the rest doesn't necessarily worsen in a meaningful/audible way.
 
I hope I'm not confusing people even more, I'm good at not being clear.

 

[ubs28]

The Shure SE846 on the Chord Hugo sounds more closely to the HD800 than it does on a high impedance source like the iPhone 6S plus.

The iPhone 6S plus colours the Shure SE846 too much.

 

[goodvibes]

  http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/ShureSE846BlueFilterSample2.pdf   look at the "electrical impedance and phase" graph, the impedance is the pink trace.
 
about the same measure from goldenears, impedance is the lower curve and the impedance value on the left:

 
so except the rise in the treble that is stiffer on one measure than the other(from my own messing around, it's hard to get anything reliable and changing the value of the resistor used for the measurement can impact this, so maybe they actually are showing an IEM with the same specs).
anyway given the signature of the 846, a little more boost past 15khz isn't going to matter much, so what's important IMO is the curve going down from bass to 5khz.
 
for people not too confident with electricity, you can still get an idea of what is happening by imagining that the curve is the shape of your EQ. if you use a close to zero ohm impedance source, the EQ would be flat, if you use a source of several ohms, then imagine you're applying and EQ with the shape of the impedance curve.  and of course with slightly lower impedance you would get something in between flat and that curve.
edit: some times back I had posted this to try and illustrate what could happen to the 846's signature when changing the impedance, it's not precise(any slight error in the reading of impedance values lead to some massive changes, but the direction and magnitude should not be too far off. you can get an idea of what I said with the impedance curve as EQ trick: http://www.head-fi.org/t/663180/shure-se846-a-new-in-ear-flagship-from-shure-finally-impressions-p26-28/3105#post_11468047
 
 
 
this trick doesn't tell you how much db you will gain or lose at different frequencies(you need ohm's law for that), but it does give you the shape and general direction of the change. here adding impedance(several ohm instead of 0.5ohm) will make the shure to sound warmer.
 
 
now what was the IEM using as a source when the guys engineered it? you could go asking this for all IEMs and go mad from not getting much answers ^_^. just know that between impedance and filters you have a pretty wild range of signatures you could use.
the little problem I can see is that most consumer sources are made to be ok driving loads(headphones/IEMs) from the usual 16-300ohm. this IEM goes as low as 5ohm! so it's likely that a few devices will perform less than ideally with the shure plugged into them. sadly I have no magic answer about that, we would need to measure the DAP with such a low load to know (or listen and find something isn't right is the problem is massive). and nobody goes measuring DAPs or amps with a 5ohm load on the web as far as I know.

last time I saw something on the subject it was http://www.jensign.com/S4Distortion/  where the cellphone distorted into low impedance at low volume levels even though it was a lower impedance output than usual(luckily the problem has been fixed).
but I doubt it's an isolated problem with super low impedance IEMs. to some sources, 5ohm starts to look like a short circuit and all the energy now has to be dissipated by the amp itself.
IMO any manufacturer of portable gears should give specs into 8ohm nowadays instead of sticking to 16 or 32ohm as if no IEM ever went below those numbers. but that's just me day dreaming that manufacturers would do the obvious things. ^_^
 
anyway, adding a few ohm to a troubled source (with resistors in the cable for example) will make the shure warmer, that is a fact, but it might also make the source's life easier as it would now have to drive the shure+the added resistor. so it all depends on the source, for one that works fine it's IMO messing up the shure's signature making it too warm(but that's a matter of taste). for sources that you feel sound better when you use a higher impedance IEM, maybe try to get a resistor adapter or some old school volume attenuator(but that might have greater channel imbalance) and then maybe EQ to go back to something closer to the signature you prefer?
hard to just guess stuff without measurements. most of the time only crosstalk becomes real poor when the IEM is low impedance(and we don't notice unless it's like -30db or something really really poor), the rest doesn't necessarily worsen in a meaningful/audible way.
 
I hope I'm not confusing people even more, I'm good at not being clear.

Interesting. that curve looks a similar shape but with a significantly wider variance that the headroom one.

 

[castleofargh]

I don't know how each website measures impedance, I do it with a crappy resistor and REW, and simply by changing the resistor's value, and probably entering a slightly erroneous value in REW, I can get more or less impressive variations(which is to be expected).
the other possibility is that having different pairs can lead to different results(and that does happen!!!). in fact for some IEMs, the way I lay down the cable changes the impedance.
the stuff that tyll is using at innerfidelity is pretty serious, so I would tend to go with him when there is doubt, as I don't know what goldenears or headroom is using. but maybe they all do it right.

 

[SilverEars]

Look at the scale(Y-axis).  See the difference?  Change the scale on the headroom one.  The GoldenEars one looks similar to others I've seen.  I think Tyll's is similar to the GoldenEars one given the way it's scaled vertically.  Of course the variance shows how much it deviates from flat. 

 

[goodvibes]

My error, I thought the headroom gradients were 5 ohm and they appear to be 10. It all falls in line and my previous post about minimal change should be changed to agree with castleofargh. The added output between 2k and 10k from a low impedance source will make it sound leaner. Bass shouldn't change much but other ranges become better driven. I suspect I would personally prefer it from a low impedance source but that's all personal preference.