[Shane D]

Doing more comparisons today. Using my new-to-me Vali 2 and running 1540's against Meze 99 Classic's.

First off, the Shures require a big crank on the volume knob. Much harder to drive than the 99's, which take almost nothing.

Sony ZX300 DAP into SMSL SU-8 and SE to Vali 2. I haven't bothered with exact volume matching. Just crank the volume up and down every time I change a jack, which is between and during every song.

I find the 99's cleaner, clearer and crisper than the 1540's. And of course some extra bump in the bass. On some songs the 1540's seem a little noisy/bright.

With the hybrid tube amp I definitely prefer the 99's. Not that the 1540's are bad, just different. I also may be biased towards the sound signature of the 99's as they are my oldest pair of headphones.

More testing/comparisons to do. Just an FYI from one users perspective.

Shane D

 

[trellus]

Will these pads work?

https://www.amazon.com/misodiko-Rep...words=headband+cushion&qid=1572059224&sr=8-11

They sure visually look like they'd work, at that price, it might worth trying it out and reporting back?

I knew I remembered somewhere in the back of my head that someone had been using something else for the headband on the SRH1540, and now I remember, it's the Sennheiser HD 280 headband, and in fact, there's a 1540 for sale with that pad right now here on Head-Fi:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/wts-shure-srh1540-hd280-headband.912976/

 

[Quadfather]

I honestly cannot explain this, but I always come back to listening to the SRH1540s. I have headphones that are objectively "better," but I always find myself wanting the Shures even when I am listening to other "better" headphones. This includes Meze Emyrean, Sennheiser HD650, and AKG K812!

 

[Quadfather]

I just got my Ziploc, on-headband pad for Sennheiser HD280 to use on my SRH1540. The fit is perfect and it's very comfortable.

 

[manueljenkin]

My burson fun just arrived. Been playing around with it. Initially had issues with input clipping from my apogee groove dac (100% outputs 5volts). Moved it down by 8db which brings it to 2volts (also compared with nx4 line out for volume matching reference). Also made analysis with the dac of nx4dsd which is only mediocre, so I'm not posting those here.

I gotta say, the shures love a lot of current if you have enough dynamic range in the rest of the chain (dac and music). I've already run into pushing the knob near max (and that's easily 1 watt or more in peak points). So funny, that only 6 months ago I was happy powering these off of some laptop amp at maybe barely 10milli watts. The scaling is real, especially in dynamic range and intermediate modes of oscillation (low level detail). I can make out the entire noise pattern of the recording, filters used for each instrument and more. This wasn't possible with low power on the amp. The sensitivity profile of this headphone is highly non linear. Instead of just getting louder it gets sharper and more impactful with amping. I'm pushing 100x the power I used to give these and they sound about the same volume, but with a lot more impact.

Also regarding direct comparisons. I got my hd700 (you can see the other list in my old post). I'm lukewarm about them. They have got nice detail and stuff. They are very picky about amps - the 6k spike can sound nice and sparkly on one amp, while coarse resonant and annoying on another. However they are very soft and lack bite/accuracy in transients as compared to the shures regardless of amp used. I think the driver on hd700 is either just having issues producing impulse as quick as require or it is having some soft clipping artefact. I can make my shures sound like hd700 by making my dac or other filter do soft clipping. I can never make hd700 sound like srh1540. So another one bites the dust. However I do like the hd700 just because of the fact that they are easier to listen to for long sessions of relaxed listening.

Srh1540 has already slayed a lot of headphones like thx00, hd600 etc for me (wrote in my old post 2113. Page 141 same thread).

Upcoming hd800 and Sony MDR F1 comparisons. I'm lukewarm about hd800 since I've heard it before once. It's nice but didn't feel like it was accurate or anything groundbreaking. I genuinely thing the shure srh940 is overall a more accurate and higher fidelity headphone than hd800 (and measured csd do agree).

Btw on more thing. I have to say, for binaural and other live music I prefer the tone of srh940 over srh1540. Srh940 gives me a picture of how itd sound if I were at the position of the mic. Srh1540 tone feels like they took a well calibrated IPS display (srh940) and made it a little more vivid. A vague image of the eq, I've attached. I just dipped the 100-300hz region a little (all closed backs need this for occlusion compensation) and added energy around 7-9khz.

An example of binaural music:

For anyone who wants to know about the input clipping thing I described of burson fun, I'm attaching a text from a chat I made. Basically when you feed the amp, make sure your dac does 2v out and not higher.

"Was having tonnes of issues initially finally fixed. Initially I had some texture similar to some akm chips I've heard before. Dip in low treblish area, lacked bite etc.. but had too much sizzle in mid treble area. Bass was also kind of upper thickish.

After fiddling around I figured out multiple issues.

After I fixed the dac. No more wierd tonality. I just pulled the groove down by -8db. In its control panel. Returned to windows audio driver. Asio2 plugin was clipping. Keeping foobar2000 volume on 100% clips. Just pushing it down by 0.3db clears it off. Something to do with data transfer and final peak clipping (was evident in songs like why not me by Enrique where there's a thick bass hit). I've been battling multiple clipping problems lol.

I'm volume matching with nx4 as reference. For 2v I need to be -8db if my math is right (first I thought -16db since I calculated using 20logx). -8db on foobar2000 works. Or -8 on apogee groove control panel works. I think the groove control panel is directly expressed in db.

All the bite and hit I wanted are back. Just cleaner and more powerful. If you wanted to know the 8db calculation. Groove does 5v out at 100%. Amp wants 2v. 10 log ( (2/5)^2) = -7.95, which is nearly -8db

I'll try with better audio transfer protocols later. For some reason asio2 started clipping in foobar2000 for me. Maybe my virtual machine is doing weeb stuff to the rest of the memory.

New learning tho. I guess I got a clue to why my akm devices sounded that way. yum. Need to parametrize and try simulating the same."

 

[manueljenkin]

Doing more comparisons today. Using my new-to-me Vali 2 and running 1540's against Meze 99 Classic's.

First off, the Shures require a big crank on the volume knob. Much harder to drive than the 99's, which take almost nothing.

Sony ZX300 DAP into SMSL SU-8 and SE to Vali 2. I haven't bothered with exact volume matching. Just crank the volume up and down every time I change a jack, which is between and during every song.

I find the 99's cleaner, clearer and crisper than the 1540's. And of course some extra bump in the bass. On some songs the 1540's seem a little noisy/bright.

With the hybrid tube amp I definitely prefer the 99's. Not that the 1540's are bad, just different. I also may be biased towards the sound signature of the 99's as they are my oldest pair of headphones.

More testing/comparisons to do. Just an FYI from one users perspective.

Shane D

Thanks for your opinions. In my experience I have found srh1540 to be very revealing of filters used in music. You can visually check this by loading it up on some spectral analysis tools like spek for windows. Band passing typically causes grain. A lot of headphones don't show this because they are themselves acting like low pass in a parametrized way in terms of their transients and don't show this grain. Underdriving the shures to make them also a low pass or using a dac with low pass made them as grain free as possible (but with the obvious effect of losing accuracy). I'm just enjoying playing "guess the filter" game now on my srh1540.

I have also added a general eq profile for the srh1540 to convert to 940 tone which blends well if you want to inspect the signal 1:1 wrt spectrogram. Also works fantastic for binaural and live.

I'm pretty much on my path to audio enlightenment now. Realised I don't like what people call as "hifi sound". The only high end headphone I've heard and actually liked somewhat was hd800 and hd820 (both of which I still had issues with). I'm going back to roots. On my purchase list now are - Sony cd900 ,etymotic er4b, shure se425 and shure srh1840. Gonna sell off most other gear I have soon. They get zero listening time with the 1540 around.

I'm looking more into professional lineup of headphones.

Cd900 is used by Sony entertainment division for coding game audio ambeance and even in some movies/music's I guess. The shure 1540 I've seen people typically use in pro environments like, same coding spatial ambeance in games, coding synths. Btw when I mean pro I don't mean some random dj dj who moves knobs and pedals (though that also requires some skill, but it's not engineering most of the time. They are served fine by stuff like m50x which provide decent sound and good isolation). I mean people who really need accurate 1:1 reproduction, spatial accuracy and need to hear each filter and equation of trajectory used. With certain binaural recordings I can even judge the orientation of the singers head on my shures:


Anyone knows of any such other headphones. I know for sure that barely anyone uses hd800 for any pro stuff. I heard two albums apparently mixed in hd800 - Nigel Stanford's automatica and Ottmar liebert up close. Both of them had forced de essing and other artefacts very easily audible.

I've heard good mentions of names like krk kns6400/8400, phonon smb02, but I don't see their names being enunciated in pro circles as much as I see srh1840, srh940, cd900 and er4b. Se425 is something I'm interested in for personal live signing use. It's intentionally tuned to be mid forward so as to make sure you don't overblow your voice.

 

[Shane D]

Thanks for your opinions. In my experience I have found srh1540 to be very revealing of filters used in music. You can visually check this by loading it up on some spectral analysis tools like spek for windows. Band passing typically causes grain. A lot of headphones don't show this because they are themselves acting like low pass in a parametrized way in terms of their transients and don't show this grain. Underdriving the shures to make them also a low pass or using a dac with low pass made them as grain free as possible (but with the obvious effect of losing accuracy). I'm just enjoying playing "guess the filter" game now on my srh1540.

I have also added a general eq profile for the srh1540 to convert to 940 tone which blends well if you want to inspect the signal 1:1 wrt spectrogram. Also works fantastic for binaural and live.

I'm pretty much on my path to audio enlightenment now. Realised I don't like what people call as "hifi sound". The only high end headphone I've heard and actually liked somewhat was hd800 and hd820 (both of which I still had issues with). I'm going back to roots. On my purchase list now are - Sony cd900 ,etymotic er4b, shure se425 and shure srh1840. Gonna sell off most other gear I have soon. They get zero listening time with the 1540 around.

I'm looking more into professional lineup of headphones.

Cd900 is used by Sony entertainment division for coding game audio ambeance and even in some movies/music's I guess. The shure 1540 I've seen people typically use in pro environments like, same coding spatial ambeance in games, coding synths. Btw when I mean pro I don't mean some random dj dj who moves knobs and pedals (though that also requires some skill, but it's not engineering most of the time. They are served fine by stuff like m50x which provide decent sound and good isolation). I mean people who really need accurate 1:1 reproduction, spatial accuracy and need to hear each filter and equation of trajectory used. With certain binaural recordings I can even judge the orientation of the singers head on my shures:


Anyone knows of any such other headphones. I know for sure that barely anyone uses hd800 for any pro stuff. I heard two albums apparently mixed in hd800 - Nigel Stanford's automatica and Ottmar liebert up close. Both of them had forced de essing and other artefacts very easily audible.

I've heard good mentions of names like krk kns6400/8400, phonon smb02, but I don't see their names being enunciated in pro circles as much as I see srh1840, srh940, cd900 and er4b. Se425 is something I'm interested in for personal live signing use. It's intentionally tuned to be mid forward so as to make sure you don't overblow your voice.

You and I are definitely on different paths. I prefer my 99 Classic's and my HD58X's more than the Shures. I will be selling them before Christmas. I don't dislike them, but they don't grab me in any way.

My wishlist includes Focal Elex's and CFA Cascades. I currently have the Koss Electrostatics on the way from Drop.

Another in the millions of cases of "We all hear differently".

Shane D

 

[manueljenkin]

You and I are definitely on different paths. I prefer my 99 Classic's and my HD58X's more than the Shures. I will be selling them before Christmas. I don't dislike them, but they don't grab me in any way.

My wishlist includes Focal Elex's and CFA Cascades. I currently have the Koss Electrostatics on the way from Drop.

Another in the millions of cases of "We all hear differently".

Shane D

True. Have fun. That's the most important part of the hobby. Please do share what you think of those when you get em .

I just make my opinions here and if possible, a technical backing to my opinion with just the hope to help anyone who's on the fence of this product.

My friend is on the look out for a srh1540.

 

[Shane D]

True. Have fun. That's the most important part of the hobby. Please do share what you think of those when you get em .

I just make my opinions here and if possible, a technical backing to my opinion with just the hope to help anyone who's on the fence of this product.

My friend is on the look out for a srh1540.

Agreed on the fun part! I get excited with every new delivery like a kid at Christmas!

Really unsure what to expect with the Electrostats. Opinions vary Widely.

I am located in Canada, so that limits my sales market.

Shane D

 

[Hellraiser86]

Thanks for your opinions. In my experience I have found srh1540 to be very revealing of filters used in music. You can visually check this by loading it up on some spectral analysis tools like spek for windows. Band passing typically causes grain. A lot of headphones don't show this because they are themselves acting like low pass in a parametrized way in terms of their transients and don't show this grain. Underdriving the shures to make them also a low pass or using a dac with low pass made them as grain free as possible (but with the obvious effect of losing accuracy). I'm just enjoying playing "guess the filter" game now on my srh1540.

I have also added a general eq profile for the srh1540 to convert to 940 tone which blends well if you want to inspect the signal 1:1 wrt spectrogram. Also works fantastic for binaural and live.

I'm pretty much on my path to audio enlightenment now. Realised I don't like what people call as "hifi sound". The only high end headphone I've heard and actually liked somewhat was hd800 and hd820 (both of which I still had issues with). I'm going back to roots. On my purchase list now are - Sony cd900 ,etymotic er4b, shure se425 and shure srh1840. Gonna sell off most other gear I have soon. They get zero listening time with the 1540 around.

I'm looking more into professional lineup of headphones.

Cd900 is used by Sony entertainment division for coding game audio ambeance and even in some movies/music's I guess. The shure 1540 I've seen people typically use in pro environments like, same coding spatial ambeance in games, coding synths. Btw when I mean pro I don't mean some random dj dj who moves knobs and pedals (though that also requires some skill, but it's not engineering most of the time. They are served fine by stuff like m50x which provide decent sound and good isolation). I mean people who really need accurate 1:1 reproduction, spatial accuracy and need to hear each filter and equation of trajectory used. With certain binaural recordings I can even judge the orientation of the singers head on my shures:


Anyone knows of any such other headphones. I know for sure that barely anyone uses hd800 for any pro stuff. I heard two albums apparently mixed in hd800 - Nigel Stanford's automatica and Ottmar liebert up close. Both of them had forced de essing and other artefacts very easily audible.

I've heard good mentions of names like krk kns6400/8400, phonon smb02, but I don't see their names being enunciated in pro circles as much as I see srh1840, srh940, cd900 and er4b. Se425 is something I'm interested in for personal live signing use. It's intentionally tuned to be mid forward so as to make sure you don't overblow your voice.

You really like the 1540s
I love them too because they are the best closed back headphones I have heard today (in the professional realm).
But I prefer my MDR-Z1R for fun listening.

What I wanted to tell you is, that mixing and mastering engineers (when not using their monitors) use mainly open back headphones. I am a mastering engineer too and use the LCD-X from Audeze most of the time (1540 just if I have certain conditions). I also found Audeze and especially Sennheiser HD800 headphones in most of the other mastering studios I know.

 

[manueljenkin]

You really like the 1540s
I love them too because they are the best closed back headphones I have heard today (in the professional realm).
But I prefer my MDR-Z1R for fun listening.

What I wanted to tell you is, that mixing and mastering engineers (when not using their monitors) use mainly open back headphones. I am a mastering engineer too and use the LCD-X from Audeze most of the time (1540 just if I have certain conditions). I also found Audeze and especially Sennheiser HD800 headphones in most of the other mastering studios I know.

LCD-X is one of my to-try headphones along with LCD-4. But the weight and my lukewarm experience with the LCD2 C and LCD2 F was not exciting me in that direction. Also the weight. Can you confirm if HD800 was used when mastering Up close by ottmar liebert and Automatica by Nigel stanford? Regarding use in pro environments, I was relating to pro environemnts that involve coding certain synth or stuff like that. Not necessarily mastering. Both are different targets if I'm right. Mastering headphones tend to try to cater to harman target while science analysis headphones like etymotic er4b etc tend to have their own target and intention. I'm working on spatial audio projects and I find headphones with wide soundstage etc to be not useful for my work. I expect something to feel like I'm at the position of the mic.

Few doubts::
1. People who use HD800 for mastering. Do they equalize them?
2. What do people who do binaural stuff use for analysis?

I wouldn't particularly say I enjoy a well amped srh1540 on most music I have. Its too sharp for me. I actually enjoy it underamped with most music i have.

 

[Hellraiser86]

LCD-X is one of my to-try headphones along with LCD-4. But the weight and my lukewarm experience with the LCD2 C and LCD2 F was not exciting me in that direction. Also the weight. Can you confirm if HD800 was used when mastering Up close by ottmar liebert and Automatica by Nigel stanford? Regarding use in pro environments, I was relating to pro environemnts that involve coding certain synth or stuff like that. Not necessarily mastering. Both are different targets if I'm right. Mastering headphones tend to try to cater to harman target while science analysis headphones like etymotic er4b etc tend to have their own target and intention. I'm working on spatial audio projects and I find headphones with wide soundstage etc to be not useful for my work. I expect something to feel like I'm at the position of the mic.

Few doubts::
1. People who use HD800 for mastering. Do they equalize them?
2. What do people who do binaural stuff use for analysis?

I wouldn't particularly say I enjoy a well amped srh1540 on most music I have. Its too sharp for me. I actually enjoy it underamped with most music i have.

I don’t know what kind of headphones he was using. Though now I am interested too
Bob Katz f.e. uses LCD-4s.
I absolutely agree with your point concerning the useability and the merits in the sound Design Field. I just misunderstood you and thought you are speaking for the classic industry engineers (I always forget to include sound designer and co). Sorry for that

1. Yes there are really people using the HD800‘s. Some claim them to be as neutral as it gets. I wouldn’t pick them either for that purpose. Don’t know if they eq them. But why not. I also use Sonarworks Reference 4 to flatten the signature of the lcd-x‘s. It is easier to master for different mediums with a flat fr. And the Audezes work really well with that. The only headphone I know with a nearly flat response is the Sennheiser HD660S which I used before the X‘s.
2. Don’t know. Till now I never had a experience with binaural music. It is still a very small niche area. But it makes me curious for the future

 

[manueljenkin]

I don’t know what kind of headphones he was using. Though now I am interested too
Bob Katz f.e. uses LCD-4s.
I absolutely agree with your point concerning the useability and the merits in the sound Design Field. I just misunderstood you and thought you are speaking for the classic industry engineers (I always forget to include sound designer and co). Sorry for that

1. Yes there are really people using the HD800‘s. Some claim them to be as neutral as it gets. I wouldn’t pick them either for that purpose. Don’t know if they eq them. But why not. I also use Sonarworks Reference 4 to flatten the signature of the lcd-x‘s. It is easier to master for different mediums with a flat fr. And the Audezes work really well with that. The only headphone I know with a nearly flat response is the Sennheiser HD660S which I used before the X‘s.
2. Don’t know. Till now I never had a experience with binaural music. It is still a very small niche area. But it makes me curious for the future

Thanks for the insight. My guess would be the sound engineers would be using something like a cd900 or srh940 or something of that sort, especially if they are concerned about spatial accuracy. Cd900 has been a staple inside Sony circles since forever, not because it's disposable (that's the V6 which they use similar to how DJ's use hd25), but because it's apparently very accurate for their intended purpose (hearing filters). I have seen people online who use srh1540 for designing game ambeance (though I'm confused why they'd pick 1540 for that purpose over the 940.. maybe they Equalize it). Srh1540 with some other earpads (pads change the tone quite a bit) was used by HTC when they demoed their vive (an you know VR is spatially intensive). For binaural, please check out the old post I made. I attached the suggested eq for srh940 and an example of binaural song. Pretty amazing and realistic experience imo.

(link for HTC vive demo)

Binaural, other stuff are coming up quite soon since VR and AR are booming and hence there is a necessity now. All players are jumping in. Sennheiser has its ambeo. Iirc hd820 was tuned to be compatible well with ambeo recordings, but not sure. (I really don't get the hate around hd820). Most headphones that are touted for "wide soundstage" feel like fake 3d screens to me honestly .

 

[Powerray]

Hi, i went to listen to some headphones (these, Neumann, vmoda etc) and came to conclusion these ones sounded best to my metal listening.
Mostly heavy/power metal, mostly speedy guitar/synth stuff.
Why do these come out bad in reviews ???
Any other suggestions like the 1540's ?

 

[frost15]

Hi, i went to listen to some headphones (these, Neumann, vmoda etc) and came to conclusion these ones sounded best to my metal listening.
Mostly heavy/power metal, mostly speedy guitar/synth stuff.
Why do these come out bad in reviews ???
Any other suggestions like the 1540's ?

Well, I'm surprised by your comment. I've been a 1540s user for almost three years now and I could not be more happy. I'm an avid metalhead, I listen to a lot of different types of metal (black, death, prog, everything...), and I got these phones based on the good reviews they had back then in metal forums. After all these years I can safely say these are the best phones for metal under 800$ by far. I can even compare these in performance to some 1000$ cans when it comes to metal. Where did you get those bad reviews?