Westone Audio Mach Series Review
Mach Series
$299-1599
Pros
- 8 Models to suit all price brackets and sound styles
- Beautiful high quality design and build
- Solid range of tuning and high grade audiophile level signatures
Cons
- T2 Cable people may take time to get used to
- No wireless connections supplied in the series
Asking the engineers about the inspiration for the Mach Series Range.
The inspiration for the Mach series was our ES line of custom earphones, which have proven to be quite popular amongst our customer base. The tuning for each model in the Mach series tracks with the ES line.
For example, a Mach 60 has a frequency response that’s based on the ES60 model. The tricky thing about the W series is that the sound signatures were quite disparate from the customs and that caused confusion at times when trying to sell them.
The path forward is much more straightforward in that there are 8 sound signatures, and they are available in either custom or universal variants.
At the end of the day, the entire line-up is a comprehensive line-up that is designed to appeal to Musicians, which is the core audience of Westone Audio. “For musicians, by musicians” as we like to say.
Moving onto the shells which have has a complete redesign and are a fair size bigger compared to the classic W series shells.
All the shell designs are identical in the Mid and Top tier Mach series range with the exception of a slight colouring difference. The 40,50 and 60s have a Grey colour to them but the 70 and 80 models are black.
It’s hard to tell from photos or videos but there is definitely a difference distinguishing the Tier level in the ranges.
Each model in the range is shown printed on the Left shell and the Right shells have the Westone Logo and nothing else. On the inner side of the shells there is a colour co-ordinated Westone Audio Logo – Red for Right shell and Blue for left shell.
The T2 cables also have colour coding at the connectors so you can know which one is for which side.
One thing I did notice in terms of the shell design, should you own a few items in the range it is easy to mix up the Right shells as the model number is not shown anywhere.
If you do mix up your shells you can identify the serial number for the Model on the shell nozzle tube and then pair the shells correctly.
This doesn’t effect too many people as most will just own one model in the range but it is frustrating when you own more than one model in the range and same tier.
Nozzle length is small and there is no chance of inserting these too deep and the foam tips hold them in place securely.
The shells themselves look to be made of a high grade plastic and are smooth with a quality feel to them, no seam ridges, they are pretty light in terms of weight and even though they are bigger than the original W series shells they fit fine in my average sizes ears. Also after a duration of listening you won’t even know they are there.
With the T2 cables connected to the shells, you have a lot of leeway to rotate without any cut outs and the T2 connectors while not extensively used in the industry do feel better to me than MMXC and suffer zero micro-phonics at all.
In future the addition of balanced cables would be welcome as I don’t know of any easily available after market T2 balanced cables.
So for now any 2.5 and 4.4 balanced options are not available to me for currently.
One other thing to point out on the 40,50,60 of the Mach series the cable is quite a bit thinner than the 70,80 cable, it does result in taking more care as I don’t want to risk breaking the cables with pulling them too hard when disconnecting from the shells.
It may be me being over cautious but I do find my self being extra careful, which is not a bad thing just thought I ought to mention it.
Also the Bluetooth wireless connection that was present in the W later range releases is not available in the Mach Series range, it would be nice to see this included or as a small cost add on for future releases.
I’m not much of a wireless earphone person but I know a lot of our followers are, especially the ones that only use mobile devices so thought it worth mentioning.
Rest assured the pairing tolerances for each set are of taken very seriously by the engineers and the precision of +/- 2dB tolerance is the accepted levels, meaning you would not be able to discern this level of difference and the balanced coherence is perfect.
Westone Audio do not outsource manufacturing and all the earphones are built by the lab techs in Westone Audio’s USA lab location, this may be comforting to some and guarantees a high level of standard for the consumer.
Now you know about the thoughtful design and ergonomics in the Mach Series lets get to the question on everyone’s mind.
How does this range sound?
In a word – Wonderous!!
You will not be disappointed and will not look back. Let’s have a look in more detail.
