I’d like to thank
@Zachik for adding me to the tour. What follows are my thoughts on Westone’s newly released IEM, the Mach60.
Having had the Westone W30 for 8+ years, I began to wonder when Westone would release some new IEMs. Over the years, only the B30/B50 and various W80 versions have been released. 2.5 years ago a company called Lucid acquired Westone and hopes for something to happen reached a new high. With the successful resurgence of Sennheiser IEMs, one of the OG IEM makers alongside Westone, expectations were high. And I was more than happy to test my benchmarking ideology.
Two IEMs I chose were the Campfire Audio Andromeda 2020 and Sennheiser IE900, representing well established all BA and single DD IEMs of the same and higher price tag. Both have metal shells which blow Mach series’ cheap feeling plastic out of the water, no contest. Westone Wx0 series had much sturdier feeling plastic. The comfort is a tie with the Andromeda (which is quite comfy to my ears) and at least two steps below the Sennheisers. You can’t really beat that stealth form factor.
First song is a classic,
Rock You Like a Hurricane by The Scorpions. Two standouts of this song, the guitars and the vocals, do not play well with the Mach60. Klaus Meine sounds dull, two dimensional and veiled, making it hard to enjoy his performance fully. Guitars lack energy and sound very off timbre-wise. IE900 confirms what I’m hearing with clean power injected into both guitar and vocal tracks, with added sense of soundstage placement which was amiss in the Mach60. Moving on, the bass performance is lackluster as well as both the initial drumkick and the bassline are dull and blunt. Sennheisers come out on top with great rumble and decay. Treble is really troublesome to compare since it’s very rolled off on the Mach, I barely could make out any details on the hi-hats and cymbals. They just drown amidst everything else during the greater part of the song.
Can't Nobody Hold Me Down by Diddy is the soundtrack for a battle with the Andromeda 2020. First and foremost, the bass offered by both IEMs differs greatly. While Andromeda’s bass performance has always been its weakest link, I’ve found it to have some enjoyable qualities that offer some redemption. In this song, the greener IEM’s bass is slightly rumbly, warm but precise. Not really something to behold but doesn’t ruin the song making you wish you had a dynamic driver inside. The Mach60 bass is dull and boomy, not really fit for displaying bass tipical to this genre. Even though it tries to go for quantity at least, it’s not the desirable type. Neither is it basshead worthy, nor is it free of bleeding all over other frequencies. The worst of both worlds I guess. Moving on, another thing I concentrated on are the shuffly sounds on the right and clicky ones on the left. Both of them sound “kinda there” on the Mach to the point I had trouble differentiating one from the other even though I’ve heard this tune plenty of times. Andromeda renders these sounds in a precise manner that makes it easy to hear them so they become neat additions to the bassline. The Mach60 is capable of playing them but they make for annoying distraction, especially the left sound.
Next up, three brief impressions of other tracks I’ve found to show what the Mach60 is about. First up,
Do I Wanna Know by The Arctic Monkeys. While not that shy with its details, the whole presentation is very veiled and lacks clarity. Bass is boomy with lack of texture and rumble. Guitars sound passable until the vocalist joins the mix, from that moment it all blends together and both of them occupy the same space making it hard to make out the details. Parts of the drumset are rolled off and sound funnily puffy so to speak.
Everytime We Touch by Maggie Reilly continues the trend of bass and mids related woes. The former is blunt, something akin to the effect of keeping the driver diaphragm with a finger. It’s as if something was interfering with the bass performance, dampening it. The latter in the form of guitars don’t fit the song as they should, it all plays out like someone told the guitarists to be the background to the vocalist with spontaneous unpracticed jamming. The last one,
Frontier by Doctor Vox, is one of the few that work quite well with the Mach. While the bass isn’t as club-like as the artist envisioned, it doesn’t sound as off as it does with other songs. Even though it is not well controlled and likes to interfere with everything in the mix, some additional detail scattered here and there is audible and not totally drowned out. Overall feeling of congestion and lack of clarity is not as evident, although the stage still is fairly shallow and almost 2D in the center. EDM is the one genre I found the Mach60 to be capable of aspiring towards satisfactory performance, although at $1099, is it really all it can accomplish?
Compared to Mach40, the Mach60 boasts a soundstage with a wonky depth and height, unlike the M40 which is almost two dimensional. But I’m not very sold on M60’s soundstage as it’s of the weirdest shape I’ve ever heard. It reminded me of a horizontally oriented hourglass, being moderately high and wide with a hint of depth in the outer parts. The real mess is the centre stage, where there is no depth, height is also not very prominent. This leads to a very 2D sound presentation. The whole image feels off, uncanny. I’d be more than happy to accept M40’s 2D soundstage if it weren’t for its ultimate lack of a calling card across all frequencies. It feels like the M60 sans bass quantity and soundstage, as wonky as they are, so you end up with just a mediocre IEM without much to keep your attention.
Money For Nothing by The Dire Straits has M40’s stage shown as narrower and with almost no depth at all. Separation is scarce and different instruments blend into each other. Lots of details throughout the sound are muffled. The vocalist is even more veiled than on M60.
Andromeda by Dance With the Dead confirms my suspicion - the M60 is partially free of the compression heard in other tracks that have non synthesized instruments used. However, the bass is still blunt and hard to appreciate. On the other hand the M40 is still held back by its tuning and the sound lacks clarity and detail. The bass is even less suitable for this genre, barely a thump and nothing else. This set is really 2D in terms of soundstage.
For Victory or Death by Amon Amarth played by the M40 lets you guess that this pushy sound lingering in the back is in fact a drum kick, but I am not sure if I would’ve guessed it myself if this was my first time hearing the song. The percussive sets also rely heavily on memory, 1:15 onwards the crashes are very rolled off and the timbre is so far off they sound almost like a weird abused triangle. Keep in mind I am aware this song is not really a masterpiece of mastering and clarity, but the weaknesses of the Mach40 strongly exacerbate these errors. M60 has less problems with the drum kick (still a far cry compared to a DD though), the cymbals are actually audible and are truer to the real deal in timbre, but all in all the mix appears to be the vocalist with a molasses of different instruments.
After many years of absence on the scene, Westone has finally released a series of new IEMs. Sadly, the market has evolved both in what mid-tier sets can accomplish and what is expected from something that costs $1099. In both of those areas, Westone Mach60 struggle as they are both outperformed by cheaper sets and put into place by competitors of similar price point.
