Well I went ahead and bought a pair of SRH940s from Earphone Solutions, despite my SRH840s hitting my left earlobe a bit on the inside of the earcup. I figured that is probably a personal problem I will get with most headphones.
Sure (Shure?) enough, these 940s do the same thing, as expected.
I have to say these things rock! The 840s have fantastic sound and these are even better. They sound great right out of the headphone jack on my Sony laptop, then sound even a little better across the spectrum with my NG98 DAC+amp. But that is likely more due to my hearing - everything sounds better a little louder these days.
Right out of the headphone jack the volume level depends a lot on the source material, of course. For example, listening to a "B.O.B" - Airplanes" video I actually had to turn the volume slider in Windows down by about 1/3. But then with a "Jessie J. Price Tag" video I had to run the slider all the way up. At that level the volume was just right though. Plugged into the headphone amp I could blast them at any level I wanted with no ill effects on the sound.
Here are some specific thoughts on the 940s vs. 840s:
* I love the straight cord! Coiled cords always drive me nuts. The 940 comes with both, of course, so to each their own.
* Both cords still have the 90 degree twist lock on the headphone end and screw thread barrel on the business end that the 840 cord has. I like that feature, especially with a coiled cord's propensity to put spring tension on the ends and rip plugs out of jacks when you have that occasional long stretch.
* I also love the hardshell case these come with. What a great idea. Shure essentially replaced the egg carton packing in the box with this molded hardcase. Note that it is only "hard" in the sense that similar molded CD cases are these days, still flexible but just molded. If there is one thing my 840s needed was a dust cover. Now these have it. The case holds the earpads, adapters, and even that coiled cord (boo) so everything is right there. Shure was probably able to invest part of what they saved in the egg carton stuff into the hardshell.
* The better pads are great! Don't cause sweat around the pads like the plastic ones did.
* Much better look to have the wires going to the cups concealed. I never did like that look on the 840s.
* More robust detents on earcup adjustments. This is the one thing I would have really considered a bit of a design flaw on the 840s. When you pull the earcups down from the band there is a small but almost non-existent detent there to keep the setting in place - so it doesn't. The earcups would often go out or in when I took them off. These 940s have much more of a robust detent to keep the setting in place.
So far I've only found one thing with the 940s that I would consider a design flaw. You can't close the hardshell case (zip it up) with the straight cord attached to the phones. The connector sticks out too far. So you either have to leave the case unzipped (what I will be doing) or remove the cord from the phones each time.
I'm also not really a fan of the common ground wire in either the 840s or the 940s. I wish they used a 4 pin plug at the headphone end rather 3, ran 4 wires down the cable, then tied the grounds together at the 3.5mm mini plug end. Any tiny amount of crosstalk due to the small common-ground-wire voltage drop from channel A appearing on channel B would be eliminated. That would also open up the possibility of making these balanced, either by a mod or by design, by putting a double mini XLR at the other end. They could come up with a connector / adapter that converted the 4 pins to 3 for 3.5mm TRS by connecting the grounds in the adapter. But I guess that is a small thing overall and probably is the same as many other headphones.
I was seriously looking at the Denons as an altermative to the 940s until I started reading all the posts on the net about broken screws. I'm glad I went with the Shures again. Build quality seems great from what I can tell. Earphone Solutions has lightning-fast shipping BTW! I only ordered these a couple of days ago.
