Most mixes stand or fall on the mid-range, and you quickly appreciate the detail and clarity that these phones bring to that region. After a lot of listening, I even began to feel that my beloved Sonys were sounding muddy and veiled by comparison. I wouldn't want to make dubstep on these, but for any sort of guitar?based music, they're hard to beat, and the good levels of comfort and isolation make them ideal for tracking as well as mixing.

Overall the SRH-940 is still primarily a linear headphone geared more toward monitoring, as most music listeners would prefer a fuller and punchier lows, more mid coloration, and a less intense treble, even if that means less detail levels and looser bass. In that sense you can take something totally different like the heavily warm and colored B&W P5 headphone, and feel that music flows better out of the P5. But there are times when we want to hear those details in the recordings, and in a way, the SRH-940 gives me almost the same detailed sensation I hear on the Beyerdynamic DT880 headphone, except with better mids and vocal reproduction.

These Shures take no prisoners, but they sound simply brilliant - audition a pair now