Cleer Audio ALPHA Review
Verdict
Unless you're determined to achieve the best noise-cancellation this sort of money tin buy, the Alpha have enough to recommend them – both in sound quality and pride of ownership terms
Pros
- Engaging and informative audio, with non-gimmicky spatial audio every bit a bonus
- Nicely built and finished
- Impressive specification includes fine battery life
Cons
- Can be bettered for racket-counterfoil
- Slightly restricted dynamic headroom
- Numerous higher-contour rivals
Fundamental Features
- Dirac Virtuo spatial audio Spatial audio support that widens the soundstage
- Bluetooth Supports aptX Adaptive for better connection in decorated signal areas
Introduction
It takes an intrepid brand to involve itself in the marketplace for adequately expensive over-ear active noise-cancelling headphones. All the biggest guns are involved, and it'south an area where 'pretty proficient' is seldom skilful enough.
Cleer Audio, though, demonstrably fancies its chances. These ALPHA headphones have the looks, the build quality, and the on-paper specification to compete – and in Dirac Virtuo spatial sound, they have a 18-carat point of difference.
'On paper' is i thing, though… 'in do' is quite another. Are the Cleer Sound ALPHA enough to compete?
Availability
- UK RRP: £249.99
The Cleer Audio Alpha active noise-cancelling over-ear headphones are on auction now, and in the United Kingdom they're priced at £249. In America they're available for a slightly more than competitive $249. While they're not on sale in Australia notwithstanding, I expect they'll exist priced at effectually the AU$449 mark.
Far exist it from me to state the obvious, merely at this sort of money the Alpha have a fight on their hands. Sony'south all-conquering WH-1000XM4 are routinely available at this sort of money these days, and anybody from Bose to Sennheiser via Beats and JBL is ready to sell you a pair of similarly specified, similarly priced headphones wearing a more readily recognisable brand logo.
Pattern
- Apartment-folding
- Comfortable over the long haul
- 330g
Even petty around the edges of over-ear headphones blueprint is request for trouble. It almost goes without saying that Cleer Audio is not interested in making life any more difficult for itself. And then, the Blastoff are very sensibly designed to look more-or-less like every other pair of premium over-ear headphones you lot've seen.
And it's a design that's very well realised. The materials are most entirely plastic, but it'due south of superior grade – there are no creaks or groans here, and the outer contact points are soft-touch and tactile. The padding of the headband and the earcups feels practiced and proves comfortable – and the earcups themselves don't give your own torso estrus back to you for quite a while.
There'southward a decent amount of articulation in the earcups and frame, then the ALPHA will fold small and flat, and at that place'south a semi-hard deport-case in which to stow them when not in use. And while the overall weight of 330g is aught remarkable, the ALPHA design is quite meaty where many rivals aren't – so the smaller-headed among us won't feel swamped when wearing a pair.
My review sample is finished in 'midnight blueish', but 'stone' (a finish Cleer is ever so keen on) is also available.
Features
- Cleer+ command app
- Bluetooth 5.1 with aptX Adaptive
The Blastoff uses Bluetooth 5.ane for wireless connectivity, which allows compatibility with SBC, AAC and aptX Adaptive codecs. The latter should ensure flawless audio/video syncing. One time the sound information is on board, it'southward served to the ears by a couple of multi-magnet 40mm total-range drivers Cleer Audio describes every bit 'ironless.
Bluetooth 5.1 also goes a lilliputian mode to explaining the 35 hours of battery life the ALPHA enjoys – hands up anyone who doesn't call up that's sufficient?
The headphones tin can exist controlled in several ways. There's a combination of physical and touch-sensitive controls around the earcups – the shiny plastic of the right earcup includes a capacitive touch-surface that covers volume upwards/down, play/break, skip forrard/backwards, answer/end/turn down call and conversation mode (which reduces volume just long enough for you to order that soya latte). It's too dwelling house to a power on/off/Bluetooth pairing push button and a 3.5mm counterpart socket.
By way of dissimilarity the left earcup but has to support a USB-C input (the ALPHA can go from flat to full in around two hours, while 10 minutes on the power ought to be enough for iv hours of playback) and an 'activeness' push. Depending on the number and length of presses it receives, the action button will allow you to scroll through your active noise-counterfoil options (on/off/ambient noise control), engage your vox assistant, or switch the Dirac Virtuo spatial audio algorithm on or off.
Dirac has been both moving and shaking in the world of sound manipulation for years now. Many domicile theatres accept been sonically calibrated using the company'southward methodologies. With Virtuo, it's looking to deliver a spatial audio experience (in the fashion of Sony'due south 360 Reality Audio) from two-channel audio mixes.
Most of these controls are duplicated in Cleer'due south (commendably make clean and stable) Cleer+ command app. It likewise features v-band EQ adjustment (when Dirac Virtuo is switched off), and ten-step aligning of ambient noise command (varying the corporeality of external sound that's allowed in).
If it wasn't already obvious, information technology should exist apparent that Cleer Audio hasn't merely slapped an optimistic cost-tag on the Blastoff and hoped for the best. This is the kind of specification that puts the ALPHA right upwardly against some extremely well-regarded alternatives.
Sound quality
- Informative, engaging, and robust audio
- Convincing spatial audio effect
- 40mm full-range drivers
As is only sensible, Cleer Audio allows the stop user a caste of control as to the audio of the ALPHA. But, equally is nigh e'er the instance, fiddling with the EQ settings in the app tin can only have a deleterious effect on the headphones' audio. The company voiced them to sound their best when left well alone. And anyhow, the ALPHA have two quite distinct sounds without yous sticking your oar in.
Working in pure stereo, with Dirac Virtuo switched off, the ALPHA are a brawny, organised and really quite entertaining listen. Bluetooth 5.1 is more than capable of handling properly high-resolution digital sound, and with a 24bit file of Run the Jewels' Walking in the Snow playing they sound clean and upfront. Low frequencies are substantial, momentum-packed, and properly controlled.
At that place'south no droning hither, merely disciplined attack and decay to give even more than emphasis to the texture and detail involved. At the contrary end of the frequency range there's similar alacrity and substance, the Blastoff delivering only virtually as much bite and shine every bit is acceptable without getting all bolshy about it.
It's in betwixt, though, that the Cleer Audio brainstorm to make a really compelling example for themselves. Voices audio firsthand, informative, and detailed – and even while the midrange is integrated into the frequencies in a higher place and beneath it smoothly, vocals be in a piddling pocket of space that makes them singled-out and isolated (in the best sense). The more character and/or emotion in a vocal performance, the more the ALPHA seem to lap it upwards.
In pretty much every other respect, too, they're an engaging heed. There's expert organisation to the soundstage they present (fifty-fifty if it's far from the almost expansive) and decent dynamic headroom available (even if other designs breathe a trivial more deeply). The overall presentation is coherent and unified.
Switch Dirac Virtuo on, though, and the ALPHA undergo something of a change. Rather than the adequately obvious 'left', 'right' and 'middle' of the basic stereo presentation, Virtuo delivers far more of a 180-degree 'hemisphere' effect. Merely it's reasonably subtle, and consequently preferable to Dolby Atmos Music or 360 Reality Sound. Information technology sounds more natural, less artificial and processed. and, if you lot listen to a fairly archaic stereo recording like The Who's Substitute, altogether smoother and less show-off-y.
Elsewhere, the news fluctuates between 'good' and 'very good indeed'. Call quality, thanks to the Qualcomm cVc mic array, is outstanding, and it ways interaction with vocalism assistants is utterly painless as well. Dissonance-cancellation is expert in isolation, just there'southward no doubt some other designs can blackball more than background noise than the Cleer Audio can manage. It's an adaptive arrangement, supposed to adjust itself on the wing in response to prevailing ambient atmospheric condition, but in reality, seems stuck at a setting marked 'some noise-cancelling, near of the time'.
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Should you purchase it?
You enjoy some sonic nuance Dirac Virtuo is a subtle and constructive feature
You want to mind in silence Blastoff is non the terminal word in noise-cancellation
Final Thoughts
This is amid the toughest consumer electronics market of all, only with Alpha Cleer Audio does more enough to justify serious consideration.
How we test
Nosotros test every headphones we review thoroughly over an extended menstruation of fourth dimension. We use manufacture standard tests to compare features properly. We'll always tell you what nosotros observe. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Discover out more than virtually how we exam in our ideals policy.
Tested for more than than a week
Tested with various music streaming services
Tested with existent world use
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FAQs
What is spatial audio?
A concept that's slightly tricky to define as at that place are many interpretations of spatial audio, in a broad sense it opens upwardly the soundfield to instrument and voices around you in a three-dimensional sphere of sound.
Full specs
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Source: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/cleer-audio-alpha
Posted by: madduxthisheis.blogspot.com
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