Below is my review of the new BLON BL-03 earphone, the second of three new IEMs I have recently purchased.
The BLON BL-03 is a new design single-driver IEM. The earpieces are teardrop-shaped and finished in a highly-polished alloy in a gunmetal colour. The build quality is impressive with a high-quality smooth finish. It comes in a long white box with the IEMs displayed above a plain white box bearing the BLON logo and the acronym, BELIEF – LETMUSICBURN - OPPOTY - NEVERGIVEUP. This box contains a linen-finish pouch with a blue BLON logo and the spare eartips plus some documentation.
The BL-03 features detachable 2-pin cables and a 10mm diameter dynamic driver with a carbon nanotube diaphragm. The supplied cable has tightly curved ear guides and shielded connecting pins. I found this to be uncomfortable to wear and it tended to make the earpieces fall out of my ears. The smooth metal earpieces added to this problem as they failed to supply any grip. In addition, the unusual cone-shaped tips failed to provide a secure fit. I have large ear canals so therefore changed the cable for an 8-core hybrid braided type and installed large Spinfit tips.
The earphones were left burning in for over 50 hours before testing and included tracks of white and pink noise, glide tones and other audio conditioning tracks. After this I used a Hifi Walker H2 DAP with a Fiio A5 amplifier via line out, for evaluation. Initially the presentation was somewhat unbalanced. The bass seemed detached from the rest of the frequency range and mids and treble were very bright with a shrill tonality. I therefore followed the advice of “Let music burn” and “Never give up” and continued with a total of 100 hours burn-in. After this the sound was transformed. I experienced the same thing with the recent CCA A10.
The overall effect was now much more balanced with the midrange somewhat forward and a slightly brighter than neutral treble with good extension. The immediate impression was “fast” and “clean”. The detail retrieval and transient response were very good and the texture was well-rendered. Layering in electronic music was especially good. The balanced nature of this presentation suited most types of music.
Bass
After addressing the fit issues mentioned above, the bass had a very clean tonality with the excellent texture referred to earlier being a prominent quality in this frequency range. Sub-bass was deep and displayed excellent texture and resolution, with this being maintained into the mid-bass. There was little or no bleed into the midrange. “Missing” from the album “Themes” by Vangelis, was a good example. The characteristic synth patches possessed a clean edge and powerful impact. Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” is a perfect test track for evaluating bass performance. In the version by the Eos Orchestra, the bass drum strikes had clean and crisp attack with the rebound of the skin being easy to discern. Timpani had excellent timbre and superb clarity resulting in an exhilarating performance.
Mids
The midrange also displayed good detail and clarity, which allowed spatial cues to be heard clearly. Soundstage was very impressive with stereo imagery also of high quality. As mentioned above, layering was very good. This showed up well in Ray Lynch’s “Tiny Geometries” from his “Deep Breakfast” album. The complex percussive elements danced across the soundstage with the synth layering and accompaniment all combining to provide a perfect backdrop for the lead melody. The whole piece displayed great coherence, no doubt a result of a good single-driver implementation. Vocal performance was impressive, too. Al Stewart’s delicate vocal style came across faithfully in “Time Passages”. Lyrics were clear and well-enunciated and the acoustic guitar and sax solos provided a perfect foil for the vocal line. Holst’s “Moorside Suite”, in a string arrangement conducted by David Lloyd-Jones, was very impressive. The principal melody line and lively counterpoint were clear and crisp and layering was beautifully portrayed. Climaxes had great immediacy with the timbre of the various string sections reproduced accurately.
Treble
The clean, fast response of the BL-03 produced an excellent treble performance. Extension was very good and there were no harsh peaks. Clarity was first-class giving a crystalline quality to the upper register. The dense electronic percussion in Isao Tomita’s “Daphnis and Chloe”, from “The Ravel Album” was a good example of this with each element separate yet well-integrated. At no time did the treble become too dominant, though it has to be said that the overall tonality was brighter than neutral. The delicate fingering of Lavinia Meijer in her harp arrangement of Ludovico Einaudi’s “Le Onde” had a feather-light touch where the finest detail contrasted well with the fast transient attack in the more dynamic passages. The timbre of the harp was very realistic.
Conclusion
The BLON BL-03 is a very impressive single dynamic IEM. If a secure and comfortable fit can be obtained, it is capable of excellent performance. It is well-made and has a notable fast response and clean tonality and an expansive, three-dimensional soundstage. The adoption of a carbon nanotube diaphragm certainly pays dividends with an attractive immediacy and exciting sound, which although not neutral, never gives the impression of anything missing. The general profile is somewhat V-shaped but the lively midrange and bright treble balance out the solid bass resulting in a pleasing balanced effect.
Note: I would like to thank Sunny from Better Audio US for her friendly service and communication and for providing this review sample at a substantial discount.
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