Shure SRH 940 impression and support thread

[dweaver]

extrabigmehdi are you still using your rope mod on your pair of 940's? I ask because I may decide to give this a try or possibly will try some surgical tubing.
 
I picked up a pair of these this weekend after intensely trialing them along with a pair of Sony MDR-7520 (the professional version of the MDR-Z1000). After two days of A/B testing them in the store I bought the 7520 hoping the bass would settle down. But after 1 night of burn-in I was not convinced the bass would settle down enough for my tastes and the detail of the 940 kept haunting me. So back to the music store I went for one more A/B comparison and I ended up switching to the 940. I just loved their clarity to much. Once I got them home I have found I do prefer them EQ'd in the bass a bit. But I will try the rope trick if you think that might help a bit.

 

[extrabigmehdi]

 
Quote:

extrabigmehdi are you still using your rope mod on your pair of 940's? I ask because I may decide to give this a try or possibly will try some surgical tubing.

Yeah I  put the rope once for all . If it was just for the improved instrument separation, I  cannot think of using the srh940 without the mod, I'd be missing too much.
And I can use the srh940 as usual, the ear cups just have a bit more depth, I guess what matters is that the drivers are not anymore stuck to your ears.
 
Quote:

 But I will try the rope trick if you think that might help a bit.

You don't know what you miss until you try it. Let me quote what beagle said once to me:
 
Quote:

I find the sound has more depth, the top end is more subdued, mids are smoother and the bass has more presence and dynamics.

 

 

[dweaver]

well it's not like a bit of rope is all that expensive .
 
I have to say, I am using these with just a smidge EQ to the bass and I am loving the sound!
 
It's like an Etymotic with bass and soundstage But without having to stab my ears LOL

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

well it's not like a bit of rope is all that expensive .
 
I have to say, I am using these with just a smidge EQ to the bass and I am loving the sound!
 
It's like an Etymotic with bass and soundstage But without having to stab my ears LOL

yeah, but with the mod you get improvements in areas you cannot get with eq or any dsp.
. You can get a first quick idea of the sonic changes by using cotton balls (or whatever ),  but with the rope you can control thickness (my rope have roughly a thickness of 1 cm or 0.4 inch) , it's uniform, it's stays on place, it's more pleasant visually etc....

 

[dweaver]

I have to admit I will try this mod long before I do the other mod that requires me removing the foam in the driver. They are both reversible but this one is much safer to do. I did a similar mod using tubing when I had my AD900 headphones.
 
Funny how I have come around full circle in many ways. I sold the AD900 due to what I thought was a lack of bass and thin mids and here I am now owning something very similar in nature LOL. But I don't find the mids on these to be thin and the treble while detailed is not as hot or sibilant as the AD900 I believe.

 

[dweaver]

I took my new toys with me to work and let a couple of guys who appreciate headphone have a listen and as I suspected they found them too bass light for their music which is pretty much heavy beat electronic stuff. So it does appear these are a bit of a niche type headphone. But I have to say they are MY NICHE headphones .  BTW my niche is Classic Rock from the 60's to the 90's, accoustic music, folk music, all forms of Celtic music, New Age, Jazz, all forms of Classical music, hard rock (70's and some 80's), some old school metal, psychedelyc rock... wait a minute! maybe that electronic stuff is the niche!!!)
 
I have found a couple of DB increase with an EQ in the bass is all these need to shine and I have actually started to not even bother with that when using them with my iphone as I find the built presets on the iphone pretty much garbage and while I own and occassionally use EQU I find it's UI kinda limiting plus it drains the old batteries pretty fast.
 
I have seen all the posts about HD800 and the 940 and my 2 bits at this point is they are very detailed like the HD800 but lack bass in comparison. But that is based on memory only. The good news is I am going to a head-fi meet at the end of the month where I will have 3 HD800 I can sample. So I will do some A/B tests and take note at the meeting to help shed more light on this from what I hear at the meet.
 
Whether they are as good as the HD800 or not doesn't matter as much to me as the fact they are a very good headphone for their price. I have owned a pair of HD600 and AD900 headphones, both which are similarly priced and I definitely like the SRH-940 more. In comparison I would say the AD900 had the biggest sound stage of all 3 but it felt artificial and the HD600 and 940 are about a tie for sound stage. The HD600 had better bass than both the AD900 and 940 with the 940 comining in second. I would prefer if the 940 had as much bass as the HD600 but with minimal EQ'ing I think I get a similar quantity of bass that is tighter and better quality out of the 940. The mids of the 940 are vastly superior to either the AD900 (thin sounding) and the HD600 (slightly recessed or veiled) as the 940 is very full in my opinion and much more detailed than the other two. The treble is also better on the 940 in my opinion as I found the AD900 to hot and often times sibilant and the HD600 just did not reproduce cymbals in in a realistic way (I found them to have a ping like quality that just bothered me to much). The final point for me is the fact that these sound this good and are a closed headphone allowing me very similar sound stage and instrument seperation to open headphones without having the challenges in regards to sound leakage that open headphones have.
 
I have to say I am a bit saddened that the voice of Tyl and Jude have enough weight to derail these as a quality headphone. I understand they are both well respected members of the audiophile community and I enjoy their posts and reviews very much. But at the end of the day they are just two more opinions in a very large community so it would be a shame if their voice out weighs so many other voices on this headphone. I hope a few more people will at least take the time to try these at a store if possible before writing them off.

 

[R-Audiohead]

Quote:

I took my new toys with me to work and let a couple of guys who appreciate headphone have a listen and as I suspected they found them too bass light for their music which is pretty much heavy beat electronic stuff. So it does appear these are a bit of a niche type headphone. But I have to say they are MY NICHE headphones .  BTW my niche is Classic Rock from the 60's to the 90's, accoustic music, folk music, all forms of Celtic music, New Age, Jazz, all forms of Classical music, hard rock (70's and some 80's), some old school metal, psychedelyc rock... wait a minute! maybe that electronic stuff is the niche!!!)
 
I have found a couple of DB increase with an EQ in the bass is all these need to shine and I have actually started to not even bother with that when using them with my iphone as I find the built presets on the iphone pretty much garbage and while I own and occassionally use EQU I find it's UI kinda limiting plus it drains the old batteries pretty fast.
 
I have seen all the posts about HD800 and the 940 and my 2 bits at this point is they are very detailed like the HD800 but lack bass in comparison. But that is based on memory only. The good news is I am going to a head-fi meet at the end of the month where I will have 3 HD800 I can sample. So I will do some A/B tests and take note at the meeting to help shed more light on this from what I hear at the meet.
 
Whether they are as good as the HD800 or not doesn't matter as much to me as the fact they are a very good headphone for their price. I have owned a pair of HD600 and AD900 headphones, both which are similarly priced and I definitely like the SRH-940 more. In comparison I would say the AD900 had the biggest sound stage of all 3 but it felt artificial and the HD600 and 940 are about a tie for sound stage. The HD600 had better bass than both the AD900 and 940 with the 940 comining in second. I would prefer if the 940 had as much bass as the HD600 but with minimal EQ'ing I think I get a similar quantity of bass that is tighter and better quality out of the 940. The mids of the 940 are vastly superior to either the AD900 (thin sounding) and the HD600 (slightly recessed or veiled) as the 940 is very full in my opinion and much more detailed than the other two. The treble is also better on the 940 in my opinion as I found the AD900 to hot and often times sibilant and the HD600 just did not reproduce cymbals in in a realistic way (I found them to have a ping like quality that just bothered me to much). The final point for me is the fact that these sound this good and are a closed headphone allowing me very similar sound stage and instrument seperation to open headphones without having the challenges in regards to sound leakage that open headphones have.
 
I have to say I am a bit saddened that the voice of Tyl and Jude have enough weight to derail these as a quality headphone. I understand they are both well respected members of the audiophile community and I enjoy their posts and reviews very much. But at the end of the day they are just two more opinions in a very large community so it would be a shame if their voice out weighs so many other voices on this headphone. I hope a few more people will at least take the time to try these at a store if possible before writing them off.

I found they particularly excelled in these genres
 

 

[dweaver]

When I say phychedelic rock I am thinking of bands like Pink Floyd and even some Led Zeppelin which I think some consider classic rock but both of those bands are simply stunning with the 940. So for anyone who has a similar musical slant as me, these are anything but a dry studio headphone .

 

[skyline315]

dweaver, I think you summed my overall feelings up quite well.  Similar taste in music as well, so perhaps that's why we're both enjoying these so much.
 
I've found DMB to sound particularly good on the 940s as well if anyone is into them...
 
 

 

[jude]

 
Quote:

...I have to say I am a bit saddened that the voice of Tyl and Jude have enough weight to derail these as a quality headphone. I understand they are both well respected members of the audiophile community and I enjoy their posts and reviews very much. But at the end of the day they are just two more opinions in a very large community so it would be a shame if their voice out weighs so many other voices on this headphone. I hope a few more people will at least take the time to try these at a store if possible before writing them off.

You are absolutely right, and I never do try to push my opinion as anyone else's truth and certainty but my own. If someone has read comments I've made about products, and found that my opinions and experiences paralleled their own, then I can see how they might put some stock in what I'm saying. Conversely, if someone has read comments I've made about products, and consistently found that my opinions and experiences run opposite his, then I can see how he'd still find my comments valuable, if only to make sure to consistently avoid what I like, and run to the things I don't. 

 
Whenever possible, I agree that people should try to actually hear the gear first. It's just that it's so often not possible to do that, so people have to base it on a bunch of collective opinions, trying to suss out their own conclusions.
 
I agree fully with dweaver that I'm just one voice like any other, and if someone thinks otherwise, it definitely wasn't because I said so.
 
(By the way, dweaver, I enjoy your posts and reviews, man.)
 

 

[dweaver]

Thanks for the compliment Jude and more importantly your understanding where I was coming from. I laughed at your point about reading reviews. When I first came here I bought a few things based on reviews because I enjoyed the reviewers writing style, only to find I wasn't nearly as enamored with the headphones . So after a while I learned to look at people's preferences to help determine if I would like their choices or not and I definitely have a few reviewers I read just to know what to avoid LOL. I also know there are a few people who use my reviews in the same way .

BTW I also get that many people can't try headphones easily. Most of my experiences have come from purchases versus going to stores to try gear. In Canada it's very difficult to find anything of quality in stores. I just happened to get lucky with the SRH-940 and Sony MDR-7520.

Thanks for responding and thanks for a cool place to come hang out at in cyber space .

 

[extrabigmehdi]

@dweaver
I was hoping you would  try to mod  ear cup of srh940 . It's reversible. I'm looking to some feedback.
Off course you might like the srh940 , just as it is, but I'm sure it's worth it.

 

[dweaver]

Howdy extrabigmehdi;
 
I will try that mod of your's probably on the weekend or next week, as I will be off work so will have more time on my hands. I am intrigued to see what happens with a bit more space between my ears and the drivers and the cost of the rope is certainly low enough to make it worth while even if I decide I don't like it.
 
I will post my thoughts about it as soon as I can.

 

[dweaver]

Quote:

dweaver, I think you summed my overall feelings up quite well.  Similar taste in music as well, so perhaps that's why we're both enjoying these so much.
 
I've found DMB to sound particularly good on the 940s as well if anyone is into them...
 
 

Can you give me a link to some DMB music, also is that the name of the band or an acronym?
 

 

[skyline315]

Quote:

Can you give me a link to some DMB music, also is that the name of the band or an acronym?
 

Dave Matthews Band.
 
Check out something from their latest album (Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King).