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Seals. If your crib is an open floor plan or standard layout always open-doored so your pets have the run, a no-leak phone is a must. To this non smoker very little is as offensive as having to inhale other people's toxic fumes. Ditto for aural pollution. Until now my favorite hifi SEAL was beyerdynamic's T5p. On pure sonics never mind social graces I actually favor it over their T1. Would the Alpha Dog challenge it? To press my unfair advantage equally, a loaner Stello HP100MkII fronted by the Vega drove them both.

On comfort and perceived build quality the Alpha had it. Beyerdynamic's cups felt plasticky and flimsy by comparison. On price MrSpeakers™ owned the game by a landslide. Rigged from the start. On voltage sensitivity the T5p whupped ass. It took far lower numbers on the amp to play equally loud. On bass it didn't really need the EQ. To pull even the Alpha did. Now the playing field was very level. On balance however I found the Germans more Germanic. If you've heard show speaker demos from Avantgarde, Burmester and Elac, you might relate. The T5p was pricklier. Sharper around the edges. Harder. Edgier. The Alpha Dog did that typically planar thing you'll also hear from Magneplanars. Their type of resolution doesn't rely on Photoshop's 'sharpen edges' command. Certain metallic-sounding ribbon tweeters might. Not these. Particularly at higher levels and playing for example my beloved Flamenco with its crisp arpeggios for plenty of on-string action, I thought the planars less fatiguing over the long haul. I also thought the T5p drier. This often accompanies leading-edge focus. The planars had more suave decays to feel more fluid and texturally softer without booking those qualities with lower attack precision. Purely subjectively I'd pick the Alpha Dog. On expense it's not even a discussion.

Mobilitis. That's the itch to hear tunes on the move. With a can as big as the dog, you'll likely refrain from the subway, the gym and the board walk. But you might hit the porch or balcony, your own exercise bike or do household chores like dishes or dusting. Could the Alpha Dog bark loud enough directly off an iPod or Astell&Kern portable? Clearly affirmative for my RWA-modifed AK100. When I was happy it ran at ~65 on the dial out of a max 75. My 160GB iPod Classic was rather less enthusiastic. I thought of the Charles Dickens plea. "Can I have more?" Even at full tilt more wasn't to be had just like in the book. Without a portable amp like an ALO Audio International or similar, the Apple is a no go. Never mind that into the Alpha Dog the iPod's headphone output was badly thin and bleached, not full-color embodied like the AK100.

Sibling rivalry. Cosmetically the Alpha stomps the Mad not only in the cup department. The firstborn's pale gold risers have gone black for a two-tone scheme against the new red lacquer. The thin visible wires routing into each Fostex cup from above are no more. Dan's new cable is thicker and the 6.3mm plug better. So he clearly didn't stop at the cups. If you're still hesitant to accept a marked performance upswing from bloody enclosures, consider these guts of the Swiss soundkaos Wave 40 speaker.

After their review Martin Gateley experimented with replacing his former on-end cardboard liners with this Aramid honey-comb equivalent (the complete story is here). As you can faintly make out, to the rear wave bouncing off the removed back panel this looks like millions of tiny absorptive pores, far more than the earlier cardboard presented. Having heard both solutions I can vouch for the added clarity of the hi-tech material. If we return to Dan's intricate lattice work printed a micro layer at a time into his cups, the same applies. The back wave penetrates tiny air cavities and in them 'gets lost' or at least much attenuated depending on wave lengths. We're back at box talk. Or rather its lack. With the Alpha Dog the stumper isn't the enhanced clarity. That we can fathom conceptually. The stumper are the far superior top-end response and airiness which Dan wrests from the exact same driver. To me that was a bit of a shocker. It's a real shin kick too for Fostex. They might/should feel motivated to reinvestigate their own driver after seeing just how much they've left under the table. I have visions of Esoteric and APL Hifi.

Final words. The Alpha Dog is the small boutique entrepreneur's underdog which shows its corporate pater familias a mean new trick or four. It also shows all headphone makers big or small how clever application of modern 3D printing and imagination can raise the ear-cup bar. The Alpha dog is the new cupbearer. Leave it to the li'l guy to go full hog. Careful driver mods, a new wiring harness and radically improved enclosure tech have created a sealed planar that goes well beyond the first Mad Dog mod. On top-to-bottom bandwidth it's now competitive with HifiMan's very best. In the treble it one-ups Audeze. Its bass is normal i.e. outshone by the latter's extreme standard. Delivering on its promise, this sealed loading lifts the Mad Dog's darkness and lateral compaction to stage wider and recapture more recorded ambiance. Wear comfort is very high and better than the planar competition. Saving the best for last, the price is a new high in low. To tie the bow with the opening paragraph, scavenging has never looked or sounded this good. Given a very serious redesign far exceeding a minor if effective mod to another maker's creation as was true for the Mad Dog, this much elbow grease and ingenuity deserve a—very enthusiastic—award. Best $600 headphone today? Quite possibly so. Stand included? Definitely!
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