Shure: what they publish

In this database15 headphones
Figures from their own material15 of 15
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This page does not review anything Shure makes. It counts one thing: how much of what this database says about their products came out of their own documents, and how much had to be worked out or left blank.

Where each sensitivity figure came from

ModelImpedanceSensitivitySource of the figure
AONIC 326 Ω108.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
AONIC 47 Ω106.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
AONIC 536 Ω119.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SE21517 Ω107.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SE31527 Ω116.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SE42522 Ω109.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SE53536 Ω119.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SE8469 Ω114.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH14534 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH154046 Ω99.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH184065 Ω96.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH240A38 Ω107.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH440A40 Ω97.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH840A40 Ω97.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
SRH94042 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW

Impedance is almost always printed. Sensitivity is the one that goes wrong, because a decibel figure means two very different things depending on whether it is per milliwatt or per volt — about five decibels apart at 300 Ω and eighteen at 16 Ω. The conversion is here.

  • Published per mW — 15: the maker prints a decibel figure per milliwatt, which is what the database stores

What they print, and what it is worth

ModelAs printedToleranceStandard
AONIC 320 Hz –18.5 kHznot printednot printed
AONIC 420 Hz –19 kHznot printednot printed
AONIC 518 Hz –19 kHznot printednot printed
SE21522 Hz–17.5 kHznot printednot printed
SE31522 Hz–18.5 kHznot printednot printed
SE42520 Hz–19 kHznot printednot printed
SE53518 Hz–19 kHznot printednot printed
SE84615 Hz–20 kHznot printednot printed
SRH14525 to 18,000 Hznot printednot printed
SRH15405 to 25,000 Hznot printednot printed
SRH184010 to 30,000 Hznot printednot printed
SRH240A20 to 20,000 Hznot printednot printed
SRH440A10 to 22,000 Hznot printednot printed
SRH840A5 to 25,000 Hznot printednot printed
SRH9405 to 30,000 Hznot printednot printed

Shure prints a frequency range for all 15 models here whose sheets have been read.

Not one of those ranges comes with a tolerance in decibels. Without a ±dB figure a range says nothing about how loud the headphone is at either end of it, which puts Shure with the majority: of the 490 models across this database whose maker prints a range, 58 print the tolerance.

The rows are not even called the same thing twice: 2 different headings across 15 models (“Frequency Range”, “Frequency Response”).

No measurement is published here — only what was printed. The whole count, maker by maker, is in the frequency response audit.

What reaches 100 dB on all 15

The hardest of the 15 to drive is the Shure SRH1840: 2.5 mW and 0.40 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 7 to 65 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.

280 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 15, and the cheapest of them is the Apple USB-C dongle (EU) at $9. “Reaches” means the maker’s own published power figure is enough at that load; it is not a judgement of how it sounds.

On hiss the count is smaller, because most of the industry does not publish a noise figure at all: of the 83 sources here that do, 33 stay under the threshold of hearing on all 8 of their in-ears. The one to watch is the Shure SE846 at 134 dB/V — the more sensitive the in-ear, the more of the amplifier’s own noise you hear.

Their lowest impedance is the Shure AONIC 4 at 7 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 0.87 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 88 of the 169 sources that publish an output impedance manage that.

These counts use figures the source makers published themselves. A product that publishes nothing is not counted as a pass anywhere above, which is why the three numbers differ so much. The collection matcher runs the same arithmetic over whatever you actually own.

What the paperwork adds up to

Almost everything this site says about Shure came from them. That is not the normal case and it is worth saying out loud.

The rule used here is the same for every maker and is described on the manufacturer index. Every figure behind it can be opened on the product page it came from, with the document it came from linked.

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