BLON BL-30 Review and Measurements

@philmon thread, measurements, and DIY mods here: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/blon-bl-30-110-70mm-driver-headphone.10357/

The BLON BL-30's claim to fame is the big-ass 70mm driver. This piques my interest because there's no replacement for displacement when it comes to bass. Whether we are talking about woofers, car motors, or solder suckers. (Yeah, try a small solder sucker and see how useless they are compared to a big one). The problem of course is how will such a larger driver handle the highs? Usually here is a price to be paid, but how much? What compromises can we live with to get good bass.



Now before I get into the measurements or subjective impressions (which were quite good), I have to point out something hugely disappointing. The ergonomics and construction are first rate shit and what gives people the impression that China makes garbage. (This is not true). @tommytakis sent these to me in a box (thanks for the Korean treats - we just visited Houston and loaded up a cart at H-mart - however, kids and I pretty much devoured everything in a week) and by the time they arrived, one cup unscrewed itself from the gimble and the wire mesh cover fell off. It took me some effort and tin snips to put the wire mesh properly back on.

Oh, and as far as ergonomics and fit: what the heck is this? Is this a new fashion statement from BLON?


Really, that's how it rests on my head. I even flattened and stretched out the top headband as far as I could. Who the designed this ergonomic fail? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. If I am, please let me know. It's a damn shame because the BL-30 sounds pretty good. Maybe one of you guys could lift the drivers and make a super Sony MDR-MA-900.

 

BLON BL-30
Frequency Response
Flat Plate Coupler (no pinna) Compensated


I think that 2k dip is there, but over exaggerated as a measurement artifact. Will confirm via CSDs. There a little local peak at 8.5kHz, but it doesn't seem that bad. Next let's take a look at the EARS measurement to get a different perspective. The EARS is narrower than my head, so was able to get an OK seal.

BLON BL-30
Frequency Response
miniDSP EARS compensated (SBAF 3.2)

 

BLON BL-30 CSDs



A few observations:

1. Clean! That black space from 2kHz onward from less than 1ms to 3ms. The decay is clean with no crap. This is often a good sign (high correlation but not determinate) of a highly scalable (sounds better with better gear) headphone. The tuning is different from the Sony MA-900, but I can say already the BL-30 has much more potentional.
2. We can see the peak at 9kHz, but there's no ridge, no long lived ringing. This is good.
3. A well formed ridge is at 12kHz. The good thing is that this past the area of annoyance (4-9kHz fro my personally). There a bit of ssss ssss, but just a bit.
4. The deep dip at 2kHz as seen in the frequency response appears to largely bit a measurement artifact. I hear a small dip there, but hardly as deep as seen the in FR. On the CSDs above, that dip only exists at 0ms - occluded by the few slices over - that dip isn't anywhere as deep as the FR suggests.

 

Distortion below. Second order goes up with SPL as expected. Third order remains very low for the most part. However, there's a distortion bump just under 2kHz, approximately where the dip is located.

BLON BL-30
Harmonic Distortions vs Frequency at Various SPL

 

BLON BL-30
Impedance
(GRN = on head, YEL = free air)


The impedance bump goes away when the cup sits on the head! I checked this twice, once in real-time during the measurement just to make sure.

As a consequence, what I'm thinking is that this may be a good candidate for open-baffle HP use. Let's try a measurement where I totally break the seal.

BLON BL-30
Frequency Response
Broken Seal


Interesting, the bass doesn't die. Extension is still excellent to 50Hz and we only drop a four db at 20Hz. Someone should grab these drivers and make a better Mysphere.

Anyway, good try BLON. I'm not going to bother doing any further subjective testing considering that these are more or less physically useable for me. Hopefully BLON addresses the ergonomic nightmare this thing is and comes back. I'd be super willing to give these another shot.

 

Linked to your thread at top of your first post. I didn't even notice it - that was last December when things were crazy for me.