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Author Topic: Alpha Dog Review and Measurements (Newer Revision with Damping Dots and Felt)  (Read 9882 times)

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Hands

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I’ve wanted to do a full Alpha Dog review for a while, and now that my pair has had some work done on it to better balance the channels and I’ve had plenty of time to listen and experiment with them, I think I am ready to do so. I believe the other threads and measurements on this site were based on older revisions of the Alpha Dog. I felt it might be appropriate to differentiate the two a bit by separating threads. My pair came with two of the damping “dots” applied to the front side of each driver and the felt damping discs for additional tuning. My main review and analysis will be done without using any of the felt discs, and I’ll provide results of further tests in my second post.

Presentation, Looks, Features, Comfort, Etc.

Presentation and looks are obvious highlights of the Alpha Dog. The cups look great and are beautifully painted. The new baffles work well and allow the pads to more seamlessly integrate with the entire headphone. Little touches like the black slider bars go a long way in making this feel like a premium product. And everything feels very sturdy and well put together, including the somewhat microphonic cable.

Also included are some basic accessories, such as a microfiber cloth, a hex key to tune the vents, and a headphone stand. I know many have complained about the height and size of the headphone stand, but given its historical roots in needing to fit a medium-sized, priority mail USPS box, I think it works well. For me, I have no problems with unplugging the cable and storing it in the middle section of the stand, though now that Dan has switched to other shipping providers, perhaps the height of the stand will be adjusted in the future. I thought it was a nice touch and don’t see much of a reason to fuss over it.

Speaking of the hex key, the tuning options available to the Alpha Dog are quite nice. If you find the sound to be too heavy or lacking in the bass, you can adjust the tuning vents with the included hex key (more on this in my second post). However, this does come with a disclaimer warning against tuning multiple times (only once is recommended) and that MrSpeakers/Dan won’t be liable for any damage you cause. I believe you can get them re-tuned for a fee if you mess them up. Personally, unless you have really good ears or measurement equipment to verify tunings, I’m not sure how much I’d recommend this.

Comfort is quite good on the Alpha Dog. Assuming the leather headband strap is adjusted to act more like a suspension headband (you may need to shorten it a bit on your own for this), it evenly distributes weight across the head. Clamping force is rather light, and the alpha pads are, as always, very comfortable. The Alpha Dog can get a bit heavy for long listening sessions, but it’s not at the level of some of the heavier orthos.

The packaging itself is rather modest, but it is efficient and gets the job done well. It at least matches the red and black colour schemes. Overall, I give the Alpha Dog high marks in the non-sound related categories. Perhaps the cable could be less microphonic, and perhaps the headphone stand could be taller, but I don’t think it’s worth worrying about.

Sound

It’s no secret that I was not a fan of the early Alpha Dog iteration I heard. I simply found them too uneven, peaky, and exaggerated in the treble. There was potential, but I just did not think the Alpha Dog was ready for launch in that state, nice looking paint or not. You are welcome to disagree with me on that point. With the new damping “dots” and felt discs available, with most or all Alpha Dogs shipping default with one or two “dots” per channel now, I was pretty eager to check them out again. Whether or not any other internal changes have been made, I cannot say for sure.

The new damping tweaks certainly make a positive difference, in m y opinion. Treble response is smoothed out and less harsh on the ears. If one desires an even darker, smoother sound, they can use the felt damping discs. For this review, I stuck to listening without felt discs and relied on the two “dots” per channel.

The Alpha Dog can be a bit difficult to adequately describe from a sound perspective at times. In most situations, it has a fairly neutral sound with some caveats. It does seem to have an inherent sort of hard or even slightly glaring aspect to the sound, most noticeable in how the upper mids and treble are presented. That’s not necessarily to say the Alpha Dog is a bright headphone, though it can subjectively be a touch bright at times. It’s not necessarily a problem with the frequency balance, resonance/ringing, or distortion. It’s actually quite hard to pin down, so I’ll just say the sound can be a bit fatiguing at times for reasons that aren’t always perfectly explainable. The tonality and timbre lean towards sounding a bit hard and artificial. Thankfully, there are tuning options to mitigate this, and given I am more on the sensitive side of the hearing spectrum, I doubt most will find this problematic or hear it at all. (Personally, one felt disc added per channel goes a long way for my ears, though many of the traits, positive or negative, still shine through.)

The next thing that jumps out about the Alpha Dog is the bass. It is a fairly bassy sounding headphone, though not necessarily thick sounding. If anything, the elevated bass feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the sound. This is immediately apparent against other headphones with a flatter, more linear bass response. However, I think it is done tastefully, and it has a nice sense of impact, presence, and rumble without overdoing it. Decently clean, detailed, and textured. It’s just odd that, for being relatively neutral in most regards, the Alpha Dog does have some extra bass. Take that as you will. If you don’t like it, you can simply adjust the tuning vents. (I have since adjusted the vents for a more neutral sound, and this does work well.)

Some smaller aspects I noticed were a slightly cupped or honky sound to the Alpha Dog and a very slight lack of cohesiveness and clarity across the spectrum compared to some other headphones. I want to emphasize that this was all very slight and not something you would likely notice unless doing direct comparisons against other headphones. Some of this also comes down to getting a good fit/seal and letting the pads warm up a bit on your head. Truthfully, there are very few, if any, headphones that sound perfect to my ears in this regard, so I don’t really think any less of the Alpha Dog for it.

For some strengths, the Alpha Dog does sound fairly “open” for a closed headphone. I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to really open, airy sounding headphones, but it does very well for being closed. It does a decent job with layering and picking out subtle, low-level details. There is a nice balance between sounding not too intimate and not too distant. Plenty of presence to the sound and a decent sense of room space and reverberations.

In summary, the Alpha Dog is a bassy-neutral headphone with a slightly hard and artificial tonality that I suspect most won’t mind or notice. If anything, I could see a lot of people liking that. I’d just like to hear a bit more refinement, which is likely not entirely solvable with front damping tweaks. I don’t think it particularly excels in any area of sound. However, given that it does well enough and, perhaps one of the best things about the Alpha Dog, has a few routes one can take to tune the sound to their liking, I also don’t have issues recommending it. Those willing to further experiment with other front damping schemes will likely find room for improvement. I think a lot of people will like the Alpha Dog quite a bit, though whether or not it’s the best, closed headphone option in this price range is something I’m not entirely sold o n. I’ll need to do more investigation before saying one way or another. At the very least, the Alpha Dog's imperfections aren't too out of scope relative to something like the HE-500, which I also don't find quite perfect (not saying they do things similarly well or poorly, just that the scope is roughly on par).

Measurements

As always, lengthy, subjective listening sessions always take place before measurements.

The frequency response results are quite telling. From above 200Hz on up, the Alpha Dog does have a fairly neutral and somewhat flat sound. I do see some emphasis around 5-6KHz, at least on the left channel, and the treble quality overall isn’t the smoothest. Subjectively, I think the treble is more filled in and cohesive sounding than measurements indicate, though it isn’t perfectly smooth to my ears. Early measurements I did before sending them in for repairs might have had less of a dip in the treble. Relative to the 1KHz point, the bass response is certainly elevated below 100Hz by roughly 5-6dB. Ideally, I’d like to see less bass and a smoother transition leading up to the 200Hz point. I think this was the root cause of the disconnected sound I heard.

Harmonic distortion results look OK, but not stellar (generally fairly low but quite rough looking). The T50RP driver seems to have limitations here. There is some extra HD in the bass, but it’s not terrible. This might account for the slightly rumbly, tactile nature of the bass. The right channel exhibits some particularly odd looking harmonic distortion results. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. My Alpha Dog pre-channel balance work had better looking THD results, though I did not publicly publish most of my test results. Either way, I’m not too worried about it so long as I don’t hear any glaring faults. Again, the T50RP driver certainly has some limitations.

Oh, and CSDs are fairly clean.

Coming up are some test results regarding the damping “dots” and felt discs.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2014, 05:58:36 PM by hans030390 »
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Hands

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Alpha Dog Tuning Option Measurements
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2014, 08:52:03 PM »

Attached are some quick measurements to help show what some of these tuning options bring to the table (1 take, no average, all left channel from left ear, not perfectly calibrated to 90dB at 1KHz, etc.).

1. AD left channel "reference" measurement (to compare with the other attachments)
2. AD response with 1 felt disc - primarily helps knock down the 5-6KHz area a bit
3. CSD with 1 felt disc - Still clean, the ringing in upper treble is probably just a measurement artifact
4. AD response with 2 felt discs - noticeably smooths and slightly depresses the treble response
5. CSD with 2 felt discs - Just a bit cleaner than before
6. AD response with the vent much more closed than before. Primarily lowers bass response, but also seems it might affect the upper treble response around 10KHz as well.
7. AD response with vent more closed and without damping "dots." This gets pretty nasty in the treble. Also seems to affect the 100Hz-1KHz area.

Subjectively, I think the Alpha Dogs sound pretty good with the vent tuned for less bass and the dots + 1 felt disc in place. Not a whole lot for me to complain about when I configure them like that (no measurements for that, sorry). The dots do seem to do much more good than bad, though I bet there is room for improvement with other front damping tweaks. 2 felt discs is a bit much for my ears...makes them too veiled and stuffy sounding. 1 disc seems to complement the sound, though some of the more negative characteristics I mentioned are still a bit present (largely mitigated, but not completely). I like the ability to tweak the sound to my liking, and while the Alpha Dog can be made to sound quite good, it's still not perfect and could use further refinement.
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Kunlun

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Hi Hans, thanks. I was looking at the AD, but the "hard and artificial" sound you heard was what turned me off to it.
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AZ

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Great review, as always  :)p1
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Hands

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Thanks! And Kunlun, did you actually get to try a pair, or are you going off what some have said? If the latter, you might actually like them. I think with front damping tweaks, either via the included dots/felt discs or your own solution, they can be made to sound quite good. To the point where it's pretty easy to sink into their sound and things like their slightly hard nature only really become apparent next to more organic sounding headphones. If I'm OK with it, I assume most others will be, given how picky I seem to be about that stuff. Even with all that, I could see people preferring the AD's presentation. There is a lot to like about the AD and a few things that could be refined.
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Hi Hans,
I did try the AD at a NY meet. However, it was before the dots and discs came out. I heard it just as you described the treble and I guess I'm equally sensitive to it. That's part of why I appreciate your review.

I'd like a set of closed headphones as I had an ear infection two or three years back and had to go without iems for a week or two. The AD weren't quite what I needed.
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Hands

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Hm, hard to say. You might like the sound now with the new tweaks. You might not. I couldn't really listen to them originally...painful to my ears. The tweaks go a long way, assuming that's all that has changed since the AD launch. I should have a ZMFxVibro review up within a week or so if you're still looking for something in that ballpark. Paradox is always a good option too.
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Marvey

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So Hans, this is a new revised version of the Alpha Dogs? Different from what I heard initially (as as measured by ultra)?
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Hands

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Looks like Ultra measured them back in November, which, if I'm remembering timelines correctly, at least means the new damping "dots" weren't installed by default (or even a thing), nor were the felt discs available. Small changes or not, the difference in sound is quite noticeable. I'm not sure if any internal revisions have taken place since earlier units, but I think the sticker on my headband notes a higher revision number vs. what I saw on the tour AD. I could very well have bad/false memory,or any revision number changes could purely be due to the new damping dots and discs.

Either way, worth checking out if you haven't heard them recently with the new tweaks. Get a pair that isn't too bass heavy, or adjust it yourself, and use the felt discs to your liking, and they can sound pretty good. Also, some pairs might be smoother up top and/or have less THD oddities, not that I consider my pair to be subjectively problematic with distortion. I was getting slightly different results before having the channel imbalances fixed. All comes down to T50RP driver and other AD manufacturing variances.
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Got it. Same thing but just the kits... BTW, I've put damping dots and two-three layers. Still too much of a hard edge / glare for my tastes and the layers of felt seem to take away too much.
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