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if there are linearity issues in this headphone, as with the SRH840 they are mild and learnable with experience, and all in the service of an exceptionally clear and detailed sonic picture. And wow, are these phones clear and detailed! The SRH940 doesn’t exhibit the ever-soslightly generous bass that you can hear in the SRH840; the bass is tight, carefully controlled, and gives the impression of honesty without hype or skimpiness. Listening to acoustic bass and cello, whether in jazz standards performed by Aga Zaryan’s combo or the Turtle Island String Quartet playing the music of John Coltrane, was a delight, with richness and detail that cheaper phones tend to sweep under the rug. There was power when it was needed, but never at the expense of clarity; bass notes, fundamental and critical lower overtones, spoke with detail at all times. Amazing. The mids were much like those of the SRH840; perfectly audible without being forward, and again very detailed in the critical frequency range where vocals live. Johnny Cash, Robert Plant, Aretha Franklin, John Wetton, Jill Scott, Sarah McLachlan, Amy Lee... all these iconic voices came forth with the richness and distinct character that made them famous, and the SRH940 made revisiting them an education in itself. The same was true of electric guitar, from Allen Holdsworth and Robert Fripp to Eric Clapton and David Gilmour, and of acoustic and baritone guitars played by everyone from Pat Metheny to Steve Howe. I said of the SRH840, “Not so much ‘less is more’ as ‘less is still just about enough’.” I think that assessment applies beautifully to the SRH940. If you’re of the belief that human hearing ends at 20 kHz for the sharpest ears and more like 12 kHz for old rockers, you might wonder why a 30 kHz treble extension is such a big deal for the SRH940. Stop wondering and listen to what these phones give you, in their treatment of hand percussion, cymbals, hi-hats, piano, violin, and other instruments with a lot of high-end information. It’s all there, crisp and detailed and proportioned beautifully, without a hint of shrillness unless the source itself had issues. (Yet again, my own CD recordings from early in my home-studio career justify their existence by serving as bad examples.) The recurring theme here is clarity and detail... nothing is missing, nothing is hidden. Mixes open up and reveal tiny nuances you might otherwise miss; the bowing technique on a tricky violin solo by Mark Wood, or the telltale gated ‘chiff’ of noise that gives away an acoustic guitar track as coming from a sample library rather than the real thing. I found myself just relearning all the lovely little hidden treasures in my reference library, picking out stuff that so often goes missing in cheap phones. Any complaints? Not really... only two observations worth thinking about before plunking down your cash for the SRH940s.

One is that these phones are going to make you love what you hear in them, and that it will take a little bit of practice with very wellknown reference material (prerecorded stuff you know really well, and your own music where possible) to get their sound into your ears to the point where you can use them for frequency balancing tasks. If, on the other hand, you’re not so much into headphones as overall balance/tone monitors but more as a way of spotting sloppy bits that speakers in a room may not reveal, the SRH940 is an experience not to be missed. The other observation is a personal-taste one that longtime readers of Recording will know by heart from my prior headphone reviews. I am not normally a fan of headband-based phones, preferring springloaded sling designs, and I eventually find any headphone with a padded headband fatiguing to wear. While the SRH940 lasted longer than many other models, I eventually (and regretfully) had to take them off and give my skull a rest. If you prefer headbands, or at least don’t mind them, this will be a non-issue for you. Final thoughts We can buy decent headphones for under fifty dollars, good ones for a hundred, and great ones for two hundred. Why would we nearly double that figure for a pair of headphones, if conventional wisdom says we should be spending our big bucks on improving the room

and putting up a proper set of nearfield or midfield monitor speakers instead? Here’s my take. Headphones can be used for overall reference monitoring in a pinch; in fact, a really good pair of headphones, when combined with a reliable amplifier and (where needed) D/A converter, can be a very portable and reproducibly accurate listening environment in situations where we may not be able to rely on the room, the speakers, or both. In such a situation, we require accuracy, but anyone who’s used a high-end “clean” preamp or studio monitor can tell you that accuracy and sterility are not the same thing. A headphone can be clear and detailed and revealing without being flat, clinical, or unpleasant. Beyond that, consider how we interact with headphones in their more common control-room use, namely looking for details that need addressing or cleaning up in our tracks or mixes. Personally, I would much prefer a headphone that reveals everything in stark detail while also sounding beautiful, to one that offers a similar level of detail while being blandly accurate. I worry a lot less about missing details because I love the sound of my headphones and want to keep on listening, than about missing details because my

headphones’ sound leaves me cold and I just want to get my listening over with. Put these items together—clarity and detail with a sound that’s easy to love without being dishonest or overly flattering— and you have a perfect example of why one may want to pay a bit more for a truly impressive pair of headphones. Shure’s SRH940 is just such an example. Price: $375 More from: Shure, www.shure.com.
RECORDING NOVEMBER 2011

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Recording - November 2011

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