Introduction

Westone Audio merits recognition as a pioneer in the in-ear monitors market, having worked on both universal- and custom-fit IEMs for four decades now. The brand has been synonymous with stage monitors in particular, wherein performers were seen using Westone products live on stage and on shows leading to their fanbase and other up-and-coming musicians deciding to follow suit. Westone tends to use balanced armature drivers across its product line as evident by our own reviews of its older products from over a decade ago. Things have changed drastically since then with the advent of numerous other IEM brands world-wide, the adoption of multi-driver systems, new driver technologies, and even Westone Audio having been purchased by Lucid Audio in 2020—the same parent company also responsible for Etymotic. When I heard about Westone releasing a complete new product line last year, needless to say that I was quite intrigued to see how they fare.

Named the MACH Series, this is a professional line of earphones that has eight entries in it aptly named MACH 10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80. The first digit corresponds to the number of balanced armature drivers inside, meaning you can get a single BA MACH 10 or an 8-BA MACH 80 set, and all of them share a similar design language as evident from the photo I took. Westone was kind enough to provide test samples of all eight and they came without any retail packaging. Between this and having eight products to cover in a single article, I figured the best solution would be a detailed overview of the MACH Series and coverage about how they perform, how the individual entries differ from each other, and which one might be to your liking. Thanks to Westone again for helping make this happen and see below the product specifications for two of the IEMs—the MACH 10 and MACH 80—to give you a teaser of what to expect over the following pages.

Specifications