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Comparisons. Price fixing to clone reality not excess becomes relevant when we review components 'as is'. That reports on what to expect with likely mates. Few would pipe a $499 DAC through $30.000 worth of kit after all. To give Alpha Dog and running mates best comparative context meant Bakoon's AMP-12R. From my hardware it's king of the hill by a good margin. At $5.995 it should be. Add AURALiC's Vega, Light Harmonic's super LightSpeed USB leash and Audirvana's tightest settings plus upsampling to 352.8kHz or 384kHz in 64-bit software.
From top to bottom and left to right, Alpha Dog, HifiMan HE-6, Mad Dog, Audeze LCD-2, Audeze LCD-3
For a planar face-off I had Audeze 2 and 3, HifiMan HE-6 and Alpha's mad sibling. Taking one for the family, the Mad Dog was first. Nobody would deny shared genetics but the Alpha Dog opened up virtual skylight blinds. By contrast the Mad Dog was midrangy, laterally more compact, slightly opaque or indirect on the attack—warmth is the term for that—and clearly hooded on top. Spatial illumination and related effects like firmer edges and more treble sheen and fire on percussive elements was to my ears the biggest advantage for the Alpha. To capture side effects I'll opt for an easy descriptor. Box talk. We already knew that the material difference here are the new cups. It's quite audible as an absence of what we'd call box talk with speakers. Things get less fulsome, fuzziness evaporates, transients have more incision. Box talk injects a certain mellowness and fat with a less direct handling of things. This communicates itself as a slower softer less carefully enunciated reading. It also feels a bit as though our day-time bio rhythm had switched into night mode. Think darker, heavier and figuratively more romantic. That's less clear, enveloped by shadows, spatially smaller and less specifically sorted. In many ways the Alpha Dog acted like a higher-rez version of the Mad Dog. Same game, clearer vision, higher octave, more life and linearity.

The Audeze LCD-2 was next. The Alpha had the more informative lit-up treble not just over its brother but also this can. The LCD-2's calling card was its noticeably butcher bass. Only by contrast Dan's can sounded a bit tipped up and leaner. On headspace as the subjective in-skull panorama (wide) or crunch (narrow), the open-backed planar still was broader. But the sealed Alpha wasn't far behind. On airiness it actually edged it out. That was a big compliment. In a perfect world I'd graft the LCD-2's bass power and color saturation on the more comfortable lighter Alpha Dog with its superior highs. In the real world and as someone who adores the Bakoon/Audeze combo, I'd season to taste with ancillaries. The very wide-bandwidth Bakoon is super lucid and ultra resolved. It complements the chocolaty-rich Audeze to perfection. With the more open Alpha Dog I'd opt for Simon Lee's slightly warmer denser Stello HP100MkII or its costlier Eximus DP1 mate. Then—evil grin cocked—I'd engage their analog bass boost. For relative pennies on the Bakoon/Audeze dollar ($1.200 for the Stello, $2.995 for the Eximus, DACs onboard) I'd feel within spitting distance. Triangulating with the Mad Dog, that's a closer if less sophisticated stand-in for the LCD-2. The Alpha's gains in treble energy and light move it more into the domain of a HifiMan HE-6. That's a slightly different tonal aesthetic.

In fact the heavier, cosmetically less elegant, far less efficient but twice-priced HifiMan HE-6 was a sort of alpha ego. It being so demanding of proper amplification makes your chances of hearing Alpha Dog at its best so much better than the HE-6*. On treble-critical missions like a piano's far right when hammered vigorously and mic'd up too close to emphasize steel, the Chinese statement could get steelier. Sibilants got spittier. It suggested slightly more upper harmonic energy or perhaps even faster rise times. Think Sennheiser HD800 of planars. Finding both of these a bit too bright especially with as fast and twitchy an amp as the Bakoon, I favored the Alpha's take on the subject. Your bias could differ but on this count it'd be a close call either way. A bigger decider in my book would be tonal textures. I found the HE-6 to mimic the Metrum Hex. It played it a bit drier and damped. As such it felt dialled for timing exactitude and PRaT. Being a bit glossier, wetter and more generous, the Alpha Dog looked at the AURALiC Vega. Here your choice of amplifier will shift the balance. Appropriate options for the HE-6 are simply far slimmer. If the Alpha Dog/Vega aroma has your attention, the LCD-3 goes even farther. To my ears it gives up a tad of the LCD-2's bass magic in trade.
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* From Korean reader SongKyung-han: "I recently purchased an HE-6. I listened to it a couple of years ago and like you preferred the LCD-2. However after I tried it with a decent speaker amp and adaptor I realized that it sounds really good. In my experience speaker amps do a much better job than even high-power headphone amps like the Schiit Lyr, EF-6 or RSA Dark Star when it comes to the HE-6. Now I have the Pathos Classic One MkIII and the HE-6 sounds better than the LCD-3 or HD800 when those are driven from a decent headphone amp. Several users have commented that Nelson Pass' FirstWatt amps deliver the best performance for the price.

On planar power a comprehensive survey ought to include the new 'X-rated' Audeze LCD-XC as their take on the sealed planar; and Joe Skubinski's open-backed Abyss. From my quintet of choices I'd paint the map as follows. The $300 Mad Dog is an LCD-2 on the cheap without the beaucoup bass. It's less sophisticated and resolved but has a similarly dark rich luscious heavy feel. To my ears the LCD-3 isn't an unequivocal step up from the 2 but somewhat of a sideways move particularly on less revealing amps. As the amps get costlier and more advanced, the 3 steps forward but in bass matters I still prefer the 2. At twice the money I've personally not felt the call to pursue Audeze's best. The HE-6 is a high-maintenance proposition and the more affordable HE-500 the better balanced effort. That would make the Alpha Dog my new favorite planar if it just had Audeze-style bass. It doesn't. Here even the HE-6 has it ever so slightly beat. Screwing with its bass screw (which I didn't), Dan's description of it suggests that the Alpha would never go Audeze in the first place.

Doggie Dream Team
With Simon Lee's Eximus DP1 I have the perfect audezifier in his selectable analog bass EQ. With both LCDs this gets negatively elephantine as they don't need any LF help. With nearly all other phones in my collection that boost is very useful and often more space intensifier/deepener than bassy tone control. Hence my criticism of the Alpha Dog isn't selective. On bass Audeze simply set the standard. And you know the game. Once heard one can never 'unknow' such a thing. It might not be fair or reasonable but just is. Without trickery the Alpha Dog thus has to share my personal planar favorite spot with the LCD-2. With trickery the Alpha Dog wins because it costs less; has the better top end; is lighter, easier and more comfy to wear in bed where I do a lot of late-night groovin' propped up on a pillow; and with bass EQ becomes a more complete better balanced design (there's no treble EQ to do the same for the Audeze).