Shure SRH940 Professional Reference Headphones

Very detailed and accurate, bad built quality

In terms of sound separation these headphones are fantastic! Much better than many expensive studio headphones, and much better than many expensive studio monitors! You will hear new details in songs that you had never heard before, even if you have listened to that song for 10 years! These are very awesome for mixing, because they are really neutral and flat, with NICE sound separation, very accurate details, and NOT bass heavy. These are for pr... Show Moreofessional mixing, mastering, not for enjoying music. Comfort: Your head will hurt after 1-2 hours, because the nasty bumps on the headband will cause too much pain! those are not soft, and will annoy your head like nails! Also, the headphone is heavy and you will think you have put a 2kg stone on your head after two hours! Built quality: Terrible! 1) Jack problem: I returned them once to Thomann to get the jack fixed (and they fixed it), but the input jack become loose and I didn't send it thomann (sending from Finland to Germany for fixing a jack is not fair). 2) The headband plastic (where it is joint to the cup), fractured. It is a hard, bad plastic! You have to be very careful. Conclusion: Awesome sound, specially for closed-backs, very nice sound separation, very flat and neutral for mixing! Awful built quality. If you want to mix everyday, or enjoy music everyday, don't buy these! If you want to do occasional mixing and need a very good reference, these are very nice!Show Less

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

srh940 did not last

excellent sound quality and comfortable, though a little heavy for long use the join between the band and headphone have broken just on 4 months. The join is plastic only, with NO supporting metal joiner and NO metal band slider. am considering now only headphones with metal bands, even with increased cost, because the older headphones I have with metal bands have lasted years, not months.

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

I've purchased these headphones because of their sound quality and was not disappointed. Though I have little experience with other headphones to compare them with, I couldn't find any fault with the sound, and I really enjoyed listening to a wide range of genres with them. When it comes to comfort, I'm picky, and though the earpads were great and never hurt my ears, the headband had the top of my head hurting quite a bit after only 20 minutes ... Show Moreor so. Still, I was mostly able to bear it throughout long periods of time. Finally, I didn't find the quality of the material very good at all. I do use my headphones all day, every day, but I was very careful with them, and they never left my desk - I never even folded them more than a couple of times. Nonetheless, I found cracks in the headband after only three months, so I had to send them back. I understand other people have a different experience with these headphones, and the sound quality really is great, but I'd caution anyone considering purchasing this item to seriously consider the build quality issues they may encounter.Show Less

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

Sound great, everything else is poor.

Shure did a good job with these headphones. Sound great, but after about 2hrs they get super uncomfy, and after a few months fall apart. Had mine repaired twice. They need to update these badly!

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

What you want

These are soft and thick. Much better then the original hard thin ones on my Sure 440s. They hold the heat in and dampen external sound a bit more fyi.

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video

Superb Headphones, Nice Design

This is a real quality product. I bought the headphones for my home recording and professional monitoring use, but they are also great for general hifi listening. I specifically wanted a set that had a detachable cable, and there is a very simple and effective twist lock mechanism on the jack plug that fits into the left earphone. The headphones are extremely comfortable to wear for long periods, with luxurious ear pads, and they come in a very nice protective and robust quality box, with a spare cable and spare ear pads.

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

Best headphones I've ever used

I use these mainly for monitoring tracking when recording. However they are also fantastic for listening to commercial releases and at this price level must be one of the best available pairs of headphones. Added bonuses are the robust case, two sets of cables, straight and curly and a spare set of ear pads. Overall, can't recommend highly enough.

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

Great sound - but a little fragile.

Maybe I'm a bit hard on these headphones, but was disappointed to have a headband breakage after just five months. Under warranty, so replaced for free, but all the same... Soundwise though I love them. Plenty of high and mid, lovely and spacious. Unforgiving of amps - drive them with something good or you'll be wasting your money. But the best closed-backs at this price range I'd say - no regrets.

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

Superb headphones!

These headphones are quite high definition: you can hear sound details that you haven't heard before and that you really do not expect. The balance between treble and bass sound is quite good, the overall sound is very transparent, there is no bass enhancement such as in other headphone models. I mainly use these for mixing as a contrast to my KRK near-field monitors, also in combination with Toneboosters Isone Pro VST plugin (creating diff... Show Moreerent virtual listening rooms) which helps me a lot to judge the mix in a music production. I can really reccommend these headphones as a reference. The design could have been a little less clunky but the most important is the sound! Big up!Show Less

Reviewed on ThomannMusic.com

Comfort for Audio-Technica Headphones

I purchased these ear cushions as a replacement for the soft leather ear cushions that came with the ATH-M50 headphones. There is nothing wrong with the original ear cushions, but after wearing them for over a half-hour, the original cushions begin to feel uncomfortable. The comfort level went from a 7/10 with the original leather ear cushions to a 9/10 with these new, velour replacements. Installing the new ear cushions took less than one minute... Show More and the fit is perfect. For a little over $$, they are well worth it, and I now own an excellent, comfortable set of headphones that cost 1/2 the price of beats.Show Less

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video

Big improvement.

I bought these for my SRH440's (yes, they fit multiple Shure models). I much prefer these over the vinyl/leathery type. The sound isolation is not bad, keeping out a lot of train noise during my daily commute. Nice and squishy. I only wish there was a model which was a bit thicker, providing more room between my head and the headphones, so that my big ears have more room.

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video

Great monitors

Very comfy full sized headphones. It provides decent isolation and great details and is very neutral. Frequency range is very wide giving nice treble as well as bass details. Slightly less upper bass compared with srh440 and srh840 but the extra detail made me want to listen to my music all over again. The angled oval earcups provide much better fit and isolation then round cups like the srh550 and srh750, especially for average to small head. Th... Show Moree Audio Technica A900 felt really lose and leaky by comparison while is also a very sounding headphones. Sales assistant tells me they are not on display for trialling because people do break them. Mine don't feel fragile but they do make a little crackling sound when being twisted. I intend to use them indoors so I think they'll be alright. Love the fact that the cable is only one sided and no tiny cable to each can like the srh440 and srh840, they are hidden inside. Velour pads are definitely very good. Not sure how to clean them but an extra pair is provided out of the box. Comes with coiled as well as straight cable. The case Is huge which makes it less portable. But it is very nicely made although I wish the pullers are slightly bigger hence stronger. Arguably not as pretty as some others but if sound is what you are after, you can't go wrong with them.Show Less

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video

Very good indeed

I compared the srh840 and srh940 side by side. They both very light but the 940 is more comfortable thanks to being slightly bigger (so it doesn't touch my ears while the 840 does) and the material used in the hearpads feels a lot better to me. Build quality wise they seem to be even with again the 940 taking the lead since it doesn't have the driver cable exposed like the 840. On the sound the 940 definitively is brighter and more detailed on th... Show Moree mid to high frequencies but still very good on the low end. The 840 sounded as good as the 940 on the low end but not as detailed on the highs. Both have excellent sound and are very detailed in general so if you source is poor, you'll figure out pretty soon. At the end I chose the 940 because I preferred the highs and the added comfort. They both are excellent and I recommend listening to both.Show Less

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video

Shure SRH-940 Stereo Headphone

The Shure SRH-940 compares favorably to the Sennheiser HD-800, which costs five times as much on average as the SRH-940. The differences between the SRH-940 and the HD-800 are subtle at most over the entire spectrum. The HD-800 has a very slight edge in clarity of upper harmonics, and I don't know if that's due to superior driver design and manufacture, or whether it could be due to the placement of the larger HD-800 drivers in their large earcup... Show Mores and the sense of extra spaciousness which that creates. Either way it's not a difference that jumps out at me when switching between the two (each connected to an iPod Touch latest model playing the same tracks, and with the volumes set so they sound equally loud on most tracks) - you have to listen for the difference.The bass sounds the same to me with each headphone, and I compared them closely with tracks that have heavy, medium, and light bass. Besides the tracks listed below, bass-centric tracks include Donald Fagen - Morph The Cat, Afro-Celt Sound System - Inion Daughter, Medieval Babes - Isabella, and Pink Floyd - Speak To Me.The midrange differences are also subtle, with the HD-800 sounding slightly more open or airy, but again that may be due to the ambience the HD-800 adds by projecting its sound into those large earcups. My sense of the difference in balance is that the SRH-940 is up approximately 1 to 2 db compared to the HD-800 around 300 to 600 hz (my guess), and down about the same amount around 3 to 7 khz.Many of the SRH-940 reviews I've read talk about it being analytical, bright, or even sibilant on the high end. It doesn't sound that way to me. As best I remember the sound of the Sennheiser HD-600 and HD-650 (which I no longer have), the SRH-940 is very similar, very smooth and more-or-less neutral sounding, which may sound bland to people who expect more punch or other such things that grab your attention. If you have well-recorded music tracks with concussive bass, punchy mids, sparkly highs or other such qualities in them, the SRH-940 will reproduce those with their proper flavor and proportion. You won't miss anything.Caveats: 1) Some of my music tracks have moments of excessive brightness or sibilance with the SRH-940, so rather than try to guess whether it's the headphones or the music, I rely on comparisons to other headphones that I have to tell me whether the SRH-940 is worse, better, or the same. 2) My experience using the iPod Touch -vs- using various headphone amps is that the amps make a very subtle difference in the sound. People who report large differences are very likely experiencing impedance or phase problems due to any number of factors. If you use a headphone amp or something similar, test it first or make sure you can return it (or the headphones) if it doesn't work out.The only other headphone I compared the SRH-940 to (a very brief listen) is the B&W P5. The P5 sounds slightly hollow compared to the SRH-940, it sounds somewhat muffled on the high end, and sounds a little bit weak in the deep bass. Given that the P5 and SRH-940 sell for about the same price, and that the SRH-940 wins in sound quality on all counts (in my opinion), I'd say that the P5's advantage is smaller size and better portability.The SRH-940 will play at reasonable volume levels with portable devices such as most cellphones, iPods and so on. The straight cord feels strong enough to withstand some abuse, and with the earcups pulled all the way down and rotated against my chest, I can have the headphone around my neck all day long without it getting in my way when I'm not listening to it. It also comes with a coiled cord. Neither cord has an angled plug unfortunately. The other good news with the cord is that it's detachable. The other less-than-good news is that the detachable end is partially proprietary. The detachable plug is a standard sub-mini plug (next size smaller than a 1/8 inch mini-plug), but the plastic fitting behind that plug locks into the jack on the earcup in a way that would require DIY'ers to take the earcup apart if they want to use a different cable without the proprietary connector.The earcups of the SRH-940 completely surround my ears, and it's a close fit. The internal space for ears in each oval earcup measure 2-5/8 by 1-7/8 inches. I find the fit very comfortable, but people with much larger ears may feel very cramped. The carrycase that comes with the SRH-940 is fairly large, and would take up a lot of space in a carry-on bag for airline travel. If this is your situation, I'd recommend carrying the SRH-940 around your neck when boarding, or just wrap it in something thin to place in a suitcase, to give it minimal protection. The entire headphone seems to be plastic except for the velour earpads, and Made In China means they optimized the SRH-940 for lowest production cost. The good news is that it seems to be very well made, and given the sound quality, a real bargain at the usual prices. Isolation from external sounds is good even when not playing music. When playing music, I can't hear the telephone ring from 3 feet away, and the ringer is the old-fashioned kind - very attention-getting.In addition to the pop music tracks listed below, which I used mainly for detecting weaknesses or other problems with the sound, I played a wide variety of genres (Jazz, Diana Krall, Bill Evans Trio; Bach organ, Biggs; Beethoven 9th, Solti CSO; Chopin, Moravec; Reggae, Marley, Tosh; Country, Haggard, Yoakam; Verdi, Domingo; Sinatra and Bennett; Punk, Germs, Fear, Sid Vicious, Social Distortion; Medieval, Madrigali, Medieval Babes; Trance, Mylene Farmer, etc.)The following are some of the music tracks I tested with, and the main features I listened for with those tracks:Blues Project - Caress Me Baby (piercing guitar sound, handled well).Cocteau Twins - Carolyn's Fingers (guitar string detail and quality, excellent).Commodores - Night Shift (bass detail, excellent).Germs - Forming (raw garage sound, good).Lick The Tins - Can't Help Falling In Love (tin whistle, very clear and clean).Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side (bass impact, good; detail excellent).REM - Radio Free Europe (drum impact, very good).Rolling Stones - She's So Cold (bass impact and guitar sound, very good).U2 - With Or Without You (bass boom/high-pitched instruments/sibilants, handled well).Van Morrison - Into The Mystic (bass, moderate).Who - Bargain (voice trailing off: best I ever had, very good vocal harmonics).Show Less

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video

Had to return

They sounded good but had to return because they made my ears itch.

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video