Westone Mach 50 Unboxing and Sound Impressions
My unboxing and impressions of the Westone Mach 50.
I received the Westone Mach 50 and another model as part of a transcontinental tour offered to us Head-Fiers.
Like many of us, I have boxes full of budget IEMs, plus a bunch of mid-fi-
ish gear. If it can be said of hi-end, TOTL, or Summit-fi, I only own maybe one $1K-
ish piece. Heading north of $500 USD for anything generates a kind of uneasy experience in my back pocket, which then spreads throughout my body until it paralyzes the muscles necessary to complete the purchase by clicking the “Buy Now” button.
Let’s see what can surprise me with this Westone. I also need to keep in mind who Westone’s traditionally intended professional end user is, and what they might need or want from their IEM. I can tell you right now that there is a lot of mixing of the genes between the professional IEM user and the music loving audiophile going on here. Both will find sound traits to like in this product.
Really sturdy, nice looking box
Whoa, that’s a big storage box inside!
The gigantic Audiosense box (R), looking dwarfed by the MACH 50’s box.
Look at the goodies you get. There’s a bag with every conceivable tip option, The Linum cable, and the IEMs, plus a way to download the manual to your phone. Nice soft travel bag.
About that cable. It is probably the least microphonic cables I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. I totally forgot about that cable. My jaw movements and head twisting made more noise.
Very thin and light
Someone also engineered this excellent chin slider shown above. Way above and beyond in attention to detail.
Size comparison with the Tripowin C8 cable (L) I use with a lot of my IEMs.
Shown above is my NF Audio NA2+ which is wearing a pair of Westone star tips. I really love these tips; they never give me any problem with seal. Other notable IEMs of mine wearing Westone stars are my CCA CA16 and CRA. If they fit, on they go.
My only previous experience with a Westone IEM is my UM Pro 50, shown below.
These are also 5 balanced armature monitors. How will this venerable model stand up to the new guy?
I’ll find out using this set up. The Sony CD player is sending an optical signal over S/PIDIF to the iFi iDSD Black Label. I didn’t have any hissing problem, but then I never do with the right settings on this equipment.
I chose the short medium star tips for most of my listening. Super comfortable and easy in and out and clean up. However, the small-ish, all-day comfortable shell of the MACH 50 only blocks so much outside noise, so for better isolation, and bass/low frequencies, I chose to fit the MACH 50 with Etymotic foamies.
Isolation is complete with these tips, which I found ideal for this IEM. I can't hear any distracting equipment noise with these tips mounted.
Regarding sound, I’ll tell you right now, without EQ for the UM Pro 50, the MACH 50 instantly destroyed it in terms of musicality and clarity. The UM Pro 50 sounds dark and sucked out-sounding compared to the MACH 50. The MACH 50 sounds great without EQ, but its older brother does not. Give the UM Pro 50 the Harman AutoEQ preset treatment and it sounds a lot better, but still a bit wonky compared to the nicely balanced, detailed presentation of the MACH 50.
With the Etymotic foams there is a powerful low end response. No need for bass boosting this set. On the other hand, the rest of the spectrum is there to enjoy. The speed of this bass is eye-opening for sure, and the accompanying punch and slam is the kind of experience normally associated with dynamic drivers.
So, yeah, I've had a lot of fun with these. I have grown accustomed to dry and clinical sounding all-BA IEMs from Audiosense and others. But this is a much more lovely sounding IEM. The performer and the engineer should find everything here to assist in content creation, while the audiophile can simply kick back in all comfort and/or jive to the tunes without distraction.
