While you might think of the company Alpine as being synonymous for killer car audio systems, they’ve made a leap into the headphone market, and what a leap it has been. The Alpine Headphones combine extraordinary design with functionality with the best-of-the-best audio quality, to produce what many are saying as some of the best headphones to enter the market in a while.
What makes these Alpine Headphones sound so good is the addition of a bass transducer in the headband that essentially turns your head into subwoofer…and it works well. The bass is one step below sure perfection, transforming your music experience into a world-class concert hall. Alpine’s debut into the headphone arena has been a home run right off the bat.
Alpine Headphones put Design First
The Alpine headphones almost look like they just stepped off of a space ship. With their futuristic design, they scream high-end, and are quite unique among their competition. Available in a few color combinations, they sport a matte or glossy black headband over shiny metallic diamond-shaped ear cups that swivel in for flatter storage.
The headband lining is a rubbery textured padding, which provides a snug, comfortable amount of cushion and tension to keep the phones on your head, especially if you’re moving. In fact, we dare say these are as comfortable as they get. And while they’re not the perfect set of cans for working out because of their weight, you can lounge around or walk with these without them slipping off. Sizing adjustments can be made via the cups, which click up and down to extend the headband’s length.
Features
The Alpine Headphones come with two braided cables: A USB cable for charging the battery, and an audio cable for plugging into your device. Audio is transmitted through the included audio cable. They also have a Bluetooth radio built-in, but this technology is used only for the internal settings and audio tweaking using Alpine’s Level Play app. The app is only available for iOS, with an Android app coming soon. They also have a rechargeable battery to power the transducer in the headband, and an onboard DSP.
The Alpine Headphones App
The Alpine Level Play app’s main selling point is its ability to sort the music on your phone and spit out curated playlists according to the tracks’ “energy” level. It analyzes your music library and categorizes the tracks into “high,” “medium,” and “low” energy levels, based on beats per minute. When you want to listen to music, you can choose a level and it will play tracks that match.
Level Play also has a five-band equalizer that lets you manually tweak the sound of the headphones by way of their onboard digital signal processor. Note, Level Play only works with the music on your phone’s hardrive, not with cloud-based music.
Performance
The Alpine Headphones are clearly designed not only for looks, but for performance as well. The deep bass is outstanding. You can disable the bass transducer if you like, but when it’s enabled, you experience bass like you’ve never heard…or felt….before. Giid trebles and mids compliment the bass sound, rating the audio performance close to a “10 out of 10”.
Bottom Line
We have fallen in love with the Alpine Headphones, and for good reason. While they’re priced at $300, you do get a very refined audio experience, a useful companion app, and bass that’s hard to compete with. The unique bass transducer is clearly the deal breaker here, delivering a new parallel in music.
