[JeremyR]

Yeah, honestly I think the Mad Dog would be better suited for those artists. Imagine Dragons for sure would probably sound better with the more forgiving and bassier Mad Dog.
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=31707

lol to this (from your link):
 
"Bad sound on a lot of these tracks, most of them have some sort of bad distortion or pumping sound all over them. It's too bad because this is a really great album."
 
The "bad distortion" I think is on purpose, so not because they were ripped poorly.
 
Anyway, I am not sure base is always my thing. I don't listen to classical really (I will listen to Andre Segovia, but I don't think that counts), but every other type of music I like.
 
Bluegrass, Jazz, pop, rock, country, rap, etc.
 
Oh, and I am a gamer. I will use these while I game, however just about any relatively good pair of headphones will work for that.

 

[kstuart]

[moved late edit to this separate post]
 
IF your music listening is not 30-40% acoustic music - classical, folk, jazz, then the Mad Dog is better for anyone who is not a musician or audio professional or audiophile.   And the Mad Dog can be upgraded to the Alpha Dog by paying the difference in price (see mrspeakers.com ) starting in January.   So, you might want to get the Mad Dog, listen to it with the STX, and then if you like, get an amp, and then maybe later a DAC, and then later you can always upgrade to the Alpha Dog.   (So you won't have to bother selling a used item, which seems to be what you are trying to avoid.)
 
BTW, I am assuming you are in this thread because isolation is of value to you.  If not there are many "open" headphones to consider...

 

[koolas]

Alpha Dog + Pan Am + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u163wC6mP2A WOW !!! I almost died

 

[JeremyR]

 
IF your music listening is not 30-40% acoustic music - classical, folk, jazz, then the Mad Dog is better for anyone who is not a musician or audio professional or audiophile.  
 

 
I kind of get musician and audio professional, but audiophile? really? I am 44 years old and have listened to music pretty much every day of my life. The better the sound quality, the more I appreciate it. At what point does one become an audiophile? What does one have to do to be a card carrying member? To use your earlier analogy about waxed ski's, you might not know why one ski seems better then another (and a pro would), but you would know one was better. I think anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment.
 
Quote:

 
BTW, I am assuming you are in this thread because isolation is of value to you.  If not there are many "open" headphones to consider...

 
Correct. My wife is always pretty close, and I don't want to disturb her while she is reading or watching TV. Also if I am in the other room and she is watching TV, I don't want to hear it. It's not loud enough to need noise canceling from the other room, but it's loud enough that I don't want open headphones. The size of the sound stage is not super critical to me.

 

[miceblue]

Yeah, honestly I think the Mad Dog would be better suited for those artists. Imagine Dragons for sure would probably sound better with the more forgiving and bassier Mad Dog.
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=31707

lol to this (from your link):

"Bad sound on a lot of these tracks, most of them have some sort of bad distortion or pumping sound all over them. It's too bad because this is a really great album."

The "bad distortion" I think is on purpose, so not because they were ripped poorly.

Anyway, I am not sure base is always my thing. I don't listen to classical really (I will listen to Andre Segovia, but I don't think that counts), but every other type of music I like.

Bluegrass, Jazz, pop, rock, country, rap, etc.

Oh, and I am a gamer. I will use these while I game, however just about any relatively good pair of headphones will work for that.

Yeah the point was that the user was surprised at how low the dynamic range was. The distortion may be a feature of the song and may have been added in on purpose, but it sounds like the material was clipped (i.e. the Loudness War effect).

 

[koiloco]

  I kind of get musician and audio professional, but audiophile? really? I am 44 years old and have listened to music pretty much every day of my life. The better the sound quality, the more I appreciate it. At what point does one become an audiophile? What does one have to do to be a card carrying member? To use your earlier analogy about waxed ski's, you might not know why one ski seems better then another (and a pro would), but you would know one was better. I think anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment.
Correct. My wife is always pretty close, and I don't want to disturb her while she is reading or watching TV. Also if I am in the other room and she is watching TV, I don't want to hear it. It's not loud enough to need noise canceling from the other room, but it's loud enough that I don't want open headphones. The size of the sound stage is not super critical to me.

I've done quite a bit of recording/mixing and mastering and been involved in pro-audio/band/live sound engineering...then home theater as a hobby and now HPs but never consider or even attempt to call myself "audiophile".  I just know what I hear and do know when it's good or bad for my personal taste and objecive references.  Other than what's said, I just enjoy quality music.

 

[kstuart]

 

 
IF your music listening is not 30-40% acoustic music - classical, folk, jazz, then the Mad Dog is better for anyone who is not a musician or audio professional or audiophile.  
 

 
I kind of get musician and audio professional, but audiophile? really? I am 44 years old and have listened to music pretty much every day of my life. The better the sound quality, the more I appreciate it. At what point does one become an audiophile? What does one have to do to be a card carrying member? To use your earlier analogy about waxed ski's, you might not know why one ski seems better then another (and a pro would), but you would know one was better. I think anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment.

Again, people take this as a status, and it is not - it is just an activity.
 
Generally, people these days are in the room with music all the time.   Stores have music, TV shows and movies have music.   People play music to relax.  All just fine.
 
Some people pay attention to the music, have favorite artists, follow those artists on tour around the country, etc.
 
The three types of people mentioned in the quote are those who pay attention to small details of the sound - how clear is the hall reverberation, is the sound of the fingers hitting the bass strings clear or dulled a little, how close does the tone of the trumpet sound to a real trumpet, etc.
 
Audiophiles do that by definition.   No good or bad, right or wrong associated with it.
 
Going back to the skis example, professionals pick through as many as a dozen pairs of the same model skis, waxed slightly differently - or even just slight production variations.   I know that I could not tell them apart.
 
So as far as "anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment" - I am trying to debunk that idea, and here is another example.  There is an episode of Top Gear UK (I think about a year ago), where they try to drive professional race cars.  The results are comical, despite the fact that all of them drive cards for a living (to review them).  In some cases, pro equipment could be used by anyone else (baseball comes to mind), but many times not.
 
Of course, salesmen always promote "anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment"...

 

[eke2k6]

  [moved late edit to this separate post]
 
IF your music listening is not 30-40% acoustic music - classical, folk, jazz, then the Mad Dog is better for anyone who is not a musician or audio professional or audiophile.   And the Mad Dog can be upgraded to the Alpha Dog by paying the difference in price (see mrspeakers.com ) starting in January.   So, you might want to get the Mad Dog, listen to it with the STX, and then if you like, get an amp, and then maybe later a DAC, and then later you can always upgrade to the Alpha Dog.   (So you won't have to bother selling a used item, which seems to be what you are trying to avoid.)
 
BTW, I am assuming you are in this thread because isolation is of value to you.  If not there are many "open" headphones to consider...

 
Is this a joke?

 

[miceblue]

My mobile listening rig consists of mostly electronic, including chiptune , and pop music. I thoroughly enjoyed the Alpha Dog with such music. I am also not even close to being "a musician or audio professional or audiophile."

 

[JeremyR]

  Again, people take this as a status, and it is not - it is just an activity.
 
Generally, people these days are in the room with music all the time.   Stores have music, TV shows and movies have music.   People play music to relax.  All just fine.
 
Some people pay attention to the music, have favorite artists, follow those artists on tour around the country, etc.
 
The three types of people mentioned in the quote are those who pay attention to small details of the sound - how clear is the hall reverberation, is the sound of the fingers hitting the bass strings clear or dulled a little, how close does the tone of the trumpet sound to a real trumpet, etc.
 
Audiophiles do that by definition.   No good or bad, right or wrong associated with it.
 
Going back to the skis example, professionals pick through as many as a dozen pairs of the same model skis, waxed slightly differently - or even just slight production variations.   I know that I could not tell them apart.
 
So as far as "anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment" - I am trying to debunk that idea, and here is another example.  There is an episode of Top Gear UK (I think about a year ago), where they try to drive professional race cars.  The results are comical, despite the fact that all of them drive cards for a living (to review them).  In some cases, pro equipment could be used by anyone else (baseball comes to mind), but many times not.
 
Of course, salesmen always promote "anyone who appreciates music can benefit from quality equipment"...

 
Sorry, but that's a horrible analogy. That's like saying if I skied on the highest quality ski's in the world, that my legs would explode. Or if I tried the highest quality headphones, some how they will perform worse then cheap headphones.
 
I will agree that if you give well trained ears 10 high end amps, they can tell you what sounds different about them and then pick the ones that best suite there needs based on there experience, and a less trained ear would not be able to do that.
 
However if you put 10 amps in a room, 5 very low end, and 5 very high end, and asked someone like me to pick the one that sounds the best, 9 out of 10 times we will pick from the top 5. Quality matters to everyone. Not just self professed elitist.

 

[Greed]

   
Sorry, but that's a horrible analogy. That's like saying if I skied on the highest quality ski's in the world, that my legs would explode. Or if I tried the highest quality headphones, some how they will perform worse then cheap headphones.
 
I will agree that if you give well trained ears 10 high end amps, they can tell you what sounds different about them and then pick the ones that best suite there needs based on there experience, and a less trained ear would not be able to do that.
 
However if you put 10 amps in a room, 5 very low end, and 5 very high end, and asked someone like me to pick the one that sounds the best, 9 out of 10 times we will pick from the top 5. Quality matters to everyone. Not just self professed elitist.

 
**** just got real. OT... but REAL.

 

[koiloco]

^ I think it's time to drop the topic and let's move on.  My take has always been that if you can hear and appreciate the better differences and can afford it, by all means, spend your $ to your heart's content.  If you can't hear/distinguish the quality difference audibly, save yourself some $.  Don't just buy a high end product just for the sake of ownership/bragging right and pretend that you could tell/appreciate.  Audiophile, elitist, whatever .... doesn't matter.

 

[JeremyR]

  ^ I think it's time to drop the topic and let's move on.  My take has always been that if you can hear and appreciate the better differences and can afford it, by all means, spend your $ to your heart's content.  If you can't hear/distinguish the quality difference audibly, save yourself some $.  Don't just buy a high end product just for the sake of ownership/bragging right and pretend that you could tell/appreciate.  Audiophile, elitist, whatever .... doesn't matter.

Agreed. I can accept that at some point, those with less experienced ears are just wasting there money buying better equipment. But the idea that doing so will actually negatively impact your listening experience because your not trained enough to use it, is just ridiculous.

 

[kstuart]

However if you put 10 amps in a room, 5 very low end, and 5 very high end, and asked someone like me to pick the one that sounds the best, 9 out of 10 times we will pick from the top 5. Quality matters to everyone. Not just self professed elitist.

(1)  "elitist"
 
I've said this several times in several ways, and you just cannot comprehend it.   It is NOT better to be an audiophile with a $30,000 system.
 
In certain ways, being an audiophile is worse.   It means that you listen to the hall reverb, instead of listening to Pavarotti.
 
(2) It is very well known that if you put two identical TVs in a room, one that is professionally calibrated to make everything look realistic and accurate, and one that has color, contrast and sharpness turned up to 10, people will prefer the latter one.  This is not new or controversial, all TV sales guys know this and setup sets in Walmart, Best Buy, and so forth in accordance with this.
 
Similar things are in play in audio, just compare the sales - even to head-fi members - of "accurate" and "neutral" headphones to "fun" headphones...
 
(3) The idea that "quality matters to everyone" is very funny.  Certainly only someone living in Upper Middle Class World could think that.
 
There is probably a better example, but the plot of " Fight Club " touches on the ridiculousness of that idea (amongst many others).
 

Sorry, but that's a horrible analogy. That's like saying if I skied on the highest quality ski's in the world, that my legs would explode

 
I am pretty sure I have heard some amateur trying to get down the hill on racing skis, saying "I felt like my legs would explode".
 
By the way, the thread running through your comments is " more expensive means quality ".  Every time I mention expensive professional gear, you replace the word "pro" with "quality"...

 

[Byronb]

Can we talk about the Alpha Dogs now?