[Beagle]

Quote:

Ok, now my impression with SRH1440:
This is by far best sounding headphone, I ever heard. It leaves behind DT880, HD600, HD650, AKG 701, Q701, AD900. Other's I didn't have borrowed.
The only thing I don't like, is, that it's really bass light, and too bright. Both of these things can be adjusted. Brightness by dalethorn's mod. And basses can be improved by equaliser.
Saying, it's second worst sounding phone, it's just too much.
I have side-by-side comparsion with HD600, and HD600 is noticable behind SRH1440 in all aspects, except bass. Still, I find HD600 as overall better sounding headphone, because, the basses are just too much for me, and are needed for my preference at least at point, the HD600 have. But in many many bass lights tracks, the SRH1440 rocks more.

 
What? 

 

[gelocks]

LOL!!!

 

[Warrax]

Hold on, dudes. There's no reason for WTFs and LOLs.
 
I've ment, that sound quality and detail is better on SRH1440, just bass impact is better on HD600, and I need it on the level HD600 has. But many people around are content with lesser basses, than HD600 has. In that case, they would be happy even with SRH1440 basses. Many people are happy about bass light headphones. Basses on SRH1440 has quality, they just lack weight and impact for my tastes.
That first part of second sentance you've highlighted, was meant, that I would pick HD600 as overall headphone (that means, that you have to choose only one on everthing) even despite of it, because, I need those basses with impact at least at level HD600, and don't mind sacrificing a bit of detail and SQ in mids and highs. This is because I'm listening much time to rock and metal, and my taste needs it. It's just my personal preferance, that I cannot make a rule for everyone. I would in no way saying, that SRH1440 is worse overall headphone because of that. It's just personal preferance. Yes, I'm not native english speaker, so I should have to put more effort to explaining it, sorry.

 

[TMRaven]

I do not understand how a bass response with an average of nearly 5% distortion is considered to be 'quality.'
 
Maybe I'm being too objective here, though.

 

[rhythmdevils]

It's not distortion man, it's sex fuzz. 

 

[John In Cali]

I wonder if the distortion is a feature... Engineers sometimes put harmonic exciters on bass sounds so that people that are listening on system that don't use massive drivers that are needed to produce low end can still hear the bass.  With the bass distortion in the Shures the bass gets a boost in perceived volume and a nicer sounding tone, probably that "growl" you guys here in the bass.
Definitely not accurate but it might have been Shures own way of improving bass response in the phones.

 

[rhythmdevils]

Wishful thinking at best.  There is a reason everyone loves the LCD-2 bass.  Flat, extended, fast, low distortion. 

 

[John In Cali]

Quote:

Wishful thinking at best.  There is a reason everyone loves the LCD-2 bass.  Flat, extended, fast, low distortion. 

Ya, but your LCD-2 example helps my point.  Sure the LCD-2 has all that, but they are massive in every way.  Shure is a big and well known company in the recording world, gigantic headphones wouldn't appeal to that market.  And Shure wasn't going to move to planar drivers, they barely made their first open back phone. So they needed a way to increase the bass when the drivers they use are bass light. the 940s achieved it by being closed and using enclosure resonance as evidenced by the fact that damping the inside of the phones brings the bass down quite a bit.(I've done it myself)

 

[rhythmdevils]

There's a lot of open back phones that have more bass with less distortion.  I think it's making excuses for them, not a choice they made. 
 
This is 2012.  With all the new materials we have over the past couple decades, headphones should be improving. 

 

[Anaxilus]

I don't hear these as having bass so much as severe roll-off w/ noise masking information.  The distortion sounds like turning a well mastered uncompressed recording into an mp3.  I consider the SA5000 rather rolled off already but it sounds like a bass monster compared to these Shures.  If one doesn't notice the effect, perhaps it's not best to look for it as there seems to be a new trend in favor of massive distortion like the new $1200 noise generator sold by Denon.  Personally I think this trend almost points to some sort of giant FU to fleece the mp3 generation.  The reality is likely more pragmatic along the lines of Shure wanting to emmulate greater detail using an underperforming driver.  So roll off the bass and tip the treble to enhance everything above 1khz and roll distortion into the low end to give a perceived presence that  masks information most people don't ever listen for anyway.  Cheaper and easier than re-engineering/replacing a standard driver w/ a ring radiator or bio cellulose.  Just a thought.  

 

[rhythmdevils]

Saying it was such a concious choice gives them way too much credit.  They don't have that much control over the drivers or the final sound, if they did, they would sound better.  The problems are because of them not having control, not investing the time to make a better driver that didn't distort so much.  If Sennheiser (at least the sennheiser of a few years ago) made that driver, they'd take distortion measurements and say "back to the drawing board".  Someone at Shure said "good enough"  "we'll sell them with our brand name and our sexy enclosure"

 

[Anaxilus]

I don't know.  It's clear they tuned the driver in the 1440 to make the 1840 more neutral sounding.  I think Shure and others know enough to tweak or dope what they have.  We even do that ourselves.  I tend more toward conspiracy and profit than blissful ignorance wrt headphones and audio, perhaps everything.

 

[twizzleraddict]

Quote:

I don't know.  It's clear they tuned the driver in the 1440 to make the 1840 more neutral sounding.  I think Shure and others know enough to tweak or dope what they have.  We even do that ourselves.  I tend more toward conspiracy and profit than blissful ignorance wrt headphones and audio, perhaps everything.

 
The designs between 1440 and 1840 are slightly different enough, along with the driver tuning, to sound different in an audible sense. Definitely a design decision here. And mostly any business are out for profit here, there's no conspiracy here. That's why Shure will never approach the success to the niche market quite the same way as Audeze, Mad Dog Speakers, etc. Their target market aren't really headphiles, right? It's like saying Bose will finally launch a great product that appeals to our headphile sensibilities! 

 
Quote:

Saying it was such a concious choice gives them way too much credit.  They don't have that much control over the drivers or the final sound, if they did, they would sound better.  The problems are because of them not having control, not investing the time to make a better driver that didn't distort so much.  If Sennheiser (at least the sennheiser of a few years ago) made that driver, they'd take distortion measurements and say "back to the drawing board".  Someone at Shure said "good enough"  "we'll sell them with our brand name and our sexy enclosure"

 
I think you're generalizing and making assumptions on what the Shure designers/engineers actually did and make decisions on. Unless you work for Shure yourself, I don't think we'll ever know why they made the "choices" they made on the products. Let's not make any assumptions until we know what they actually made choices on (ie. cut corners, sign off on a design that measured subpar, etc).

 

[rhythmdevils]

You honestly think Shure doesn't know how to measure distortion?  Please people, when will you stop giving manufacturers the benefit of the doubt and realize they are playing you for fools.  These aren't designed to distort for a certain effect.  Give me a break.  They just weren't designed well.  It's that simple.  And consumers here on HF just eat it up. 

 

[obobskivich]

That's exactly it. There's more apparent bass on the SRH1840 than the FR graphs suggest, but it's a "fake" warm fuzzy bass. Comparing to better cans, you realize the true low frequency fundamentals are not being produced cleanly. I've found that D3/D5 distortion in low frequency ranges tends to make the bass sound atonal, imprecise, fuzzy, etc.

As far as the high distortion and how I suspected such, the SRH1840 simple sounded "low-fidelity" to me upon first listen. I know the "low-fidelity" thing is a cop out term, but more precisely it was an overall atonal muffled poorly articulated quality of the midrange which really caught me off guard. I'm sure people who like the SR1840 appreciate it for its lack of ringing and tonal balance. I don't actually find the SRH1840 offensive sounding. I simply feel it's not nearly good enough to justify its price (like you, I'd rather take the HD600.) There are certainly a lot of other headphones I find offensive, Beyer Tesla .

And as Anax pointed out to me, what's up with these latest hi-fi headphones with such high distortion numbers?

Sort of been following sort of haven't. So forgive me if this is sort of off-point.

TMK, THD is not required (in a psychoacoustic sense) to remain at some insane low level as you move down in frequency. 10% THD is not uncommon for subwoofers, for example. However, there are headphones in this price range that absolutely *do* maintain around 1% or less THD across their bandwidth (the ESP/950 being a very good example of this, but if you want a dynamic driver, something like the W5000 comes to mind). In the case of the SRH-1840, what I'd be very curious about is what (if any) filtering exists ahead of the driver, or the driver's general tuning - I'm seeing a small driver that's being asked to be very flat, and that is going to increase excursion and knock any dream of "linear phase" out of the park. It seems like a compromise - they wanted something that's easy to drive, stable, light, and extended - and the result is that sure you can have all that, but you can't have it with <1% THD.

Where I'm somewhat curious, and feel free to illuminate, is where THD starts to cross the JND threshold wrt frequency - are these actually violating that, or are they just dancing on the edge? (My suspicion is the later situation though). There are plenty of designs that are well regarded with high-ish THD, but most of them don't put up an almost flat line at 5%.

Unrelated to the above, I do agree with anax (and yourself - and I know I've said this before too) about newer "hi-fi" headphones being completely underwater in terms of pricing.