Dekoni Audio is pleased to share a “deep dive” look into our Shure SRH line of Choice Earpads, specifically tuned to elevate your listening experience. We start with comfort, using our soft, high density, slow rebound memory foam for an extra plush experience that conforms to the shape of your face (and accommodates glasses stems). Dekoni serves the sealed Shure SRH headphones with a choice between a vegan, synthetic Suede or Leather finish, both maintaining the isolation of the headphone and offering a smooth, soft feeling. We also tested and ensured the pads mount just as securely as the stock pads. This model fits the following headphones from Shure – SRH240, SRH440, SRH840, SRH940, SRH1440, SRH1540, SRH1840. Finally, we shaped and measured the pads to tune the sound and share a preview of how they sound compared to stock pads. In our measurements, we use the measurement data from the headphone coupled with the realistic ears of our microphone dummy head. We have been fortunate to have acquired a certain well-known Audio Precision-based measurement rig, and will continue to keep the measurements coming! The data is presented raw and uncompensated, except to cancel out the ear response of our microphone dummy head, and it’s the average data from 5 slightly different seatings of the headphone. Some measurements by others are made without headphones actually sitting on ears, or with adjustments to reflect the effect that the shape of a generic inner and outer ear will have on the sound waves – we don’t do that, because as every experienced audio enthusiast knows, we all have different ears! So, as part of a series of Dekoni Describes posts, we will walk our readers through understanding our graphs. Dekoni SRH1540 Comp The first thing to understand about an uncompensated graph is that it will sound different to the listener than the graph will show. For one, we haven’t smoothed our graphs, so there are many peaks and valleys that would have been lost information, but also there are other factors, such as the effect from the earcups and pads resting against a head and around ears, the human ear’s extra sensitivity to vocals, and that the shape of our ears and depth of our ear canals can actually amplify certain frequencies. For the purposes of swapping earpads, it is enough to say that a flat line along the 0 dB line wouldn’t sound “good” on these uncompensated graphs, a dip in the midrange is to be expected since human ears are more sensitive to that region, and mainly we want to focus on how a Dekoni pad compares to the Stock pad. With our measurements, we used the SHR1540, which comes Stock with Shure’s unusual Alcantara pad. Our Choice Leather pads offer a fully sealed, non-scratchy option that largely measures similar to the stock Alcantara. Within the frequency range of vocals, where our ears are most sensitive, the response ranges from sounding the same to the biggest change being a mere -3 dB from 5.5 kHz to 8.5 kHz, which may be helpful for people sensitive to sibilants in female vocals or performers whose instruments play outside of that range (or to preserve hearing). Our brains can easily adjust to a small difference like this, and after a few listens the feel of the smooth Choice Leather will be what continues to stand out! Dekoni SRH1540 CHL Dekoni SRH1540 CHS Our Choice Suede pads measure with a noticeable sub-bass bump compared to Shure’s stock pads. The upper mids are still a bit softer, but the rest of the midrange and midbass is still just like stock, so the Suede is a good choice for people who chose the SRH1540 originally because they wanted more of that subwoofer feeling, without EQ’ing to increase driver excursion and potentially adding distortion and breakup. The Suede is also buttery smooth and luxuriously soft, slowly sinking in and molding to the shape of your head as you wear them. The subjective factor of experiencing headphones and earpads matters the most, of course. If it sounds good, it is good! We listen with our pads for several revisions before release, and we want to thank the reviewers and our patrons on Head-Fi and other platforms who have shared their experiences. Real user experience is the best judge, and we thank everyone who has tried to describe their experience! Our Shure SRH pads are available now at our fine dealers internationally, and dekoniaudio.com.

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