Blon03 testing and comparing with SM E10c and Inkax EP01

 Blon 03 is my latest catch ,bought from a Ali seller after two more items bought earlier

The first is a Nintaus DAC player (tested long ago ) and little later a BT earphone set Ezear that operated for very short time  and then died

I had already read many reports from various sources before ordering it with very good reviews and kept a few screenshots with its frequency response . A u shaped in ear earphone with rather low levels of bass and trebles and good idea to replace my nearly linear sounded Soundmagic  E11c (upgraded E10 with microphone. AFAIK this model  won the award of WhatHiFi  on 2014 and possible its newer model for its sound )

Blon costed that time (Jan 21) at around 21EU pus shipping only a very good bargain price with  Microphone cable . At the time of writing (2 May 21) the seller hugely increased the price into 45Eu but at 9/5 the price was restored again to 21!

It has been received around 2.5 months after the order and tested immediately showing  bad audio I immediately told the seller and the next days i designed a drawing showing them its  grave shaped response curve. the person in communication was rather unable to understand and started unnecessary questions by reduplicating my requests.  It sounded with no bases but with increased lower trebles  that stop in their middles. 

This is nearly how it sounded in a graphic form. There is a peak on 3 kHz but the remain part above 5 kHZ was rather nil

After that I left them aside and tested a few times later with the same response and asked other users experience . All of them were very enthused with its sound. In the meantime the correspondence with the company was oriented towards faulty the Bluetooth ear pads. 

The user guide uses very good and comprehensive easy to use engish. 

Two weeks  after I made a minimal experiment by replacing  the thin tips with wider ones (T). They were the tips as provided by the  Soundmagic model  . It standard tip was replaced by a foam Comply^TM   clone type. It adds some more bass than the standard tip including deep bass.

The same time I was also testing the sound . Each step of replacements provided a better stage towards  sound excellence The wide silicone tip corrected the sound curve towards what most reviewers know but still the trebles were 'bleeding trebles but bassier' to my ears comparing to the SM E11  . The foam tip provided even better sound with deeper bases. All these tips complied with the standard T400 size

 

copy photo from the sellers page

The model has been then compared with two more models for this review  :

• My main SM/ Soundmagic E11c ie the E10 with built in microphone with Comply eartip.
  
• A Inkax EP01 model of only 8.5Eu with same eartip It was  found from the local market Also with microphone
  
• A 3.9mm audio splitter  cable with two outputs 
• Q3 my standard type recorder and player.Sounds are from my personal Malay  music collection  with increased trebles and the Chinese test songs included in the sold Nintaus SD card but copied in my Amoi player . I m a fan of Asian music sine my birth
  

 

a bit messy table with the earphones and the connectivity cabling

 

 My results were very good:

Soundmagic shows a relatively bassy neutral sound. Cross testing them with sounds from a Tescun Q3  player and 2:1 splitter cable shown
(a) mini increase of basses over SM
(b) mini  increases of low trebles again in Blon
(c) SM has  some sounds that are near to the 15 kHz that are not audible in the BL
(d) same sound stage
(e) similar audio and span in parallel stereo listening with buds of the same channel The sound is shifting by 2/10 towards the BL that means around 1.5-2db* (read below for the process)

The frequency response complies with the drawings  noted by other reviewers 

from primeaudio page

-Inkax shown a bit higher and extended trebles over the BLON and lower basses. When using the (e) test the sounds the "correlation distance" is +3 for the basses to -4 for the higher trebles

 

      The above picture is the frequency response of these three earphones as recorded with a Aufgeld dynamic microphone in my smartphone, using a file with a set of 17 tones from 20 to 17 kHz as  played in the same volume in the Q3 in a totaly noise isolated room . Just open the photo in a separate widow to study them
Νοτιce that such type microphones is a compromise of testing earphones. They dont respond so well in lower frequencies but i think still  they can do partially the job in the mid and higher freqs. This is a simple amateur approach to get some  simplified frequency responses the easy way   The professional approach costs more than 6000 Eu.

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Verdict  4/5 : The Eu 21 BLON is still a very good earphone that goes the job very well but still cant compare the nearly neutral Eu45 Sound magic.  

 APENDIX

------My parallel listening idea--- 

this is my idea  : the same audio channel  with different bud in each ear.
I tried to keep as deep possible the buds in the ears

 

A further notice on the photos above  . It was a rather funny experience to use these earphones. it took some time to get accustomed with these weird cables.I preferred not to turn the cable around the ear in order to remove and put it again asap.

Notice:* this idea is very simple :  putting buds of the same channel from both earphones in your ears Therefore  you get a monophonic  sound that is heard over  your nose if volumes are identical. Any variations of sound volumes in frequency components  can shift this point towards the higher sounded bud. You can now think of an linear axis with 0 for the middle point (nose) and -10/10 for each bud In the following photo the INAX are in the left ear and he BLON in the ear at right

TRN vs BLON 

replacing the ST1 with the BL03 bud for test

Now adding towards TRN ST1 that seemed to be very close to the BLON03 by chance, i tested them with the A/B switch with the following results:
ST1 was heard with a rather "flat" sound that introduces a sudden raise on the higher treble band towards to the ear . this is the band part that BLON cant play
BLON seemed to be quite richer in sound with a sudden raise on the 3 kHz band 

Graphically using the BLONin the right ear and TRN in the left ear the graphic can be shown roughly with  this picture

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I have made this idea many times over the years before testing various earphones

I would like very much if you comment below in this review with your opinions and my interesting I hope graphical method

 

 

Addition : after finding the bug with the BLON 3 that was simply the mistaken use of the mid- bud and changed into the widest tips, the sound  was clearly much better and didn't fell from the ear. The buds with the wide 'sponges' offered even bassier sound with near to AKJ  headphones audio quality Checking them with the Inkax model i found them to be quite treblier with both buds: their standard  silicone tips and also with the large 4.5mm tips !