Recording - June 2010 - 62

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Sound quality on the go—choose your flavor

Shure SRH440 and SRH840 Headphones

Both are folding designs that come with a carrying bag, and both offer a padded headband for comfort and replaceable earcup pads with generous padding. Both models come with a 3-meter straight/coiled cable that attaches to the left earcup with a twist-locking gold-plated 1/8" TRS plug, and has a gold-plated 1/8" TRS plug with screw-on 1/4" TRS adapter at the other end. Replaceable earcups and cables are a great thing to have, because they’re the first points of failure on virtually all headphones. Differences The SRH440 has earcups that are ever so slightly smaller than those on the SRH840, and it’s lighter too: 9.6 ounces without cable, vs. 11.2 ounces for the SRH840. That might not seem like much of a difference, but you notice it in long listening sessions (at least I did when A/B-ing the phones back and forth). To compensate for the added weight, the SRH840 has an even more generously padded headband than the SRH440, which is already quite comfy. The SRH840 comes complete with a spare set of earcup pads, which have to be ordered separately for the SRH440. The sealed earcups are good at blocking out external distractions when there’s any level of music playing, but they don’t do as well as specialty isolation phones (e.g. Direct Sound) at sealing in loud playback. If your singer or drummer insists on monitoring at high levels while tracking, listen carefully for bleed into nearby mics. The SRH440 has a 10 Hz–22 kHz frequency response, whereas the SRH840’s is given as 5 Hz–25 kHz. The problem with these numbers is that there are no tolerances in dB given, so it’s impossible to tell how far they’re rolled off at either end of the frequency range; further, Shure does not make frequency response plots available, so there’s no way to see (at least on paper) how flat or bumpy their responses are. For that, we have to rely on our ears... see below. While the two phones have similar sensitivities (105 dB/mW @ 1 kHz for the SRH440 vs. 102 for the SRH840), their power handling capabilities are quite different—the SRH440 can handle up to 500 mW input power, whereas the SRH840 handles a whopping 1000 mW. Now, to put this all in perspective: if you didn’t have both sets of phones on a desk in front of you at the same time for comparison, you would probably be hard-pressed to tell them apart at a glance. Specsmanship aside, what really matters is how these phones sound. Do they sound markedly different? Is one better than the other? Will they do the job in your studio? Sounds To test these phones, I loaded up a variety of music material, some two dozen albums from a wide variety of genres that I know very well plus three or four of my own projects from years past... including ones where I knew there were issues to listen for. I broke in both headphones for 48 hours before listening to them, feeding them a continuous stream of music from my Aphex 454 HeadPod headphone amplifier, and then settled in for some serious listening. (I love headphone reviews; when else do I get to tell everyone to leave me alone because I’m working hard... even though it only looks like I’m lying on the couch with my feet up and my eyes closed?) My first thought upon listening to the SRH440 and SRH840 was, “Hey, these phones sound really good.” My second thought was, “Hey, these phones aren’t all that different... but there are differences. Which do I like better?” Weeks later, after listening, mixing, and analyzing tracks before sending them off for mastering, I still haven’t been able to answer that last question to my own satisfaction.

Shure has gotten into the professional headphone business in a big way. The company is legendary for its mics and has a longstanding and well-respected line of in-ear monitors, but the SRH series of headphones is Shure’s first step into a new realm. The line has four models, including an entry-level set and a DJ model; in this review we’ll take a look at the other two designs—the SRH440 and the SRH840. Similarities Reviewing two similar models from the same line can be tricky, because if they share more points in common than differences it can be hard to differentiate them for the reader’s mind. But I’ll give it a shot... after I cover some common ground. Both the SRH440 and SRH840 are circumaural professional headphones with sealed cups for sound isolation, featuring 40 mm dynamic Neodymium-magnet drivers. They each have a 44 ohm impedance—that’s low enough to provide tons of level from even the wimpiest headphone amplifier circuit.
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RECORDING JUNE 2010

Recording - June 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - June 2010