Recording - February 2016 - 58

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Blue Lola Headphones
A refined design worthy of a closer look... and listen
Some readers will remember our
November 2014 issue, when I reviewed
Mo-Fi, Blue's first foray into the world of
headphones. It was an ambitious design,
combining an unusual cantilevered headband with an active amplification stage
inside the headphones. My conclusions
were mixed-Mo-Fi had exceptional isolation and impressive sound quality, but
almost all of the folks who tried them found
them overly heavy and uncomfortable, and
the headphones actually offered the best
sound when the amp was turned off.
Toward the end of my review, I mused
about the possibilities inherent in a
lighter, unamplified version of Mo-Fi...
and now it's here. Let's check out Blue's
new headphone, the Lola.
Lola: what's changed, what hasn't
We'll clear off the specs first. Lola is a
dynamic circumaural headphone that
sports the same 50mm fiber-reinforced
dynamic drivers as Mo-Fi. Also like MoFi, it has a 42 ohm impedance that
makes it suitable for nearly every headphone amp out there, from mobile
devices to pro interfaces. It claims a frequency response of 15 Hz to 20 kHz
with no tolerances given (an omission
that's common in headphone spec
sheets) and weighs 397 grams, or about
14 ounces. This is heavier than a lot of
headphones, but a couple of ounces
lighter than Mo-Fi.
The lighter weight is due to Lola's two
main differences from Mo-Fi: there's no
onboard amplification and the headband lacks a tensioning adjustment system. What we're left with is a headphone that has all the sound quality of
the Mo-Fi when used in "Off" mode-
and more-but with less weight and
fewer fiddly bits.
Lola comes with a carrying bag and
two easily-coiled flat headphone cables:
a 1.2-meter cable with TRRS miniplugs
on both ends and a standard Apple 3button inline remote, and a 3-meter
cable with TRS miniplugs and a snap-on
1
/4" adaptor. I have to admit that a 10foot cable that neatly coils small enough
to fit in a shirt pocket is quite novel!
58

RECORDING February 2016

Weight and comfort
At first glance, Lola looks more like sci-fi
cybergear than a pro headphone, but
there's a practical reason for the unusual
headband. It's designed to position the
earcups precisely and reliably against the
skull for the best possible seal. The earcups
themselves are shaped like, well, ears,
resulting in very little wasted volume
inside the earcups and in excellent
isolation from outside sounds. To
get better isolation than this, you'd
have to go with a purpose-built
isolation phone like those made
by Direct Sound. That's quite
an achievement for a studio
headphone!
So how does the headband work? There are a
pair of spring-loaded
joints just above the
earcups that allow for
height adjustment, and
another pair of hinges on
the headband to compensate
for different head widths. These
flex open when you put on the
headphones and contract to hold them
snugly in place.
Lola has done away with Mo-Fi's
adjustable headphone tension in favor of
a single preset tension that feels (if memory serves) a lot like Mo-Fi did when the
tension was loosened all the way. As a
result, there's no more binding or pinching at the temples. The headband works
as advertised, fitting to the skull and
holding the earcups firmly in place.
But what about the heavy weight and
its impact on comfort? Well, that's the fascinating thing about Lola-even though
it's only about 2 ounces lighter than MoFi, losing the amplifiers in the earcups
and the tensioning gizmo on top of the
head has resulted in redistributed weight
and a substantially more comfortable fit!
Yes, there's still a concentration of all the
headphone's weight at a single small
point on top of the skull, and it can still
become obtrusive in time... but we're talking about 2 or more hours of continual
use now, not the half hour (tops!) that I
could manage with Mo-Fi.

Sound quality
Memory is a fickle
thing when it comes to
audio... it only takes your
brain a few seconds to "reset
itself" and lose practical details of one
audio signal vs. another. Just taking off
one headphone and putting on another
pair immediately involves enough of a
time delay so that true A/B testing is
impossible, and comparing my experiences with Lola now to my sessions with
Mo-Fi over a year ago isn't practical.
That said, I was still startled by the significant sonic difference between what was
recorded in my Mo-Fi notes and what
Lola sounds like.
In my listening sessions in 2014, MoFi came across as a hard-rocking midforward phone, with the option for a
bass EQ tweak in one of the two amplified modes. There's nothing in my old
notes to hint that the Mo-Fi was flatter
with the amplifier off, but I'm hearing
Lola as a substantially flatter phone.
There is still a hint of mid-forwardness
on guitars and vocals, but it's not obtrusive or unlearnable-this is a headphone you can use with confidence
when tracking, editing, and as a check
source during mixdown.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2016