Westone: what they publish

In this database5 headphones
Figures from their own material1 of 5
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This page does not review anything Westone makes. It counts one thing: how much of what this database says about their products came out of their own documents, and how much had to be worked out or left blank.

Where each sensitivity figure came from

ModelImpedanceSensitivitySource of the figure
MACH 1080 Ω103.0 dBUnit not stated
MACH 2096 Ω110.0 dBUnit not stated
MACH 6035 Ω100.0 dBUnit not stated
MACH 8066 Ω104.0 dBUnit not stated
Pro X1019 Ω114.0 dB/mWPublished per mW

Impedance is almost always printed. Sensitivity is the one that goes wrong, because a decibel figure means two very different things depending on whether it is per milliwatt or per volt — about five decibels apart at 300 Ω and eighteen at 16 Ω. The conversion is here.

  • Published per mW — 1: the maker prints a decibel figure per milliwatt, which is what the database stores
  • Unit not stated — 4: the maker prints a decibel figure with no reference unit, so it is shown as printed and flagged rather than quietly converted

What they print, and what it is worth

ModelAs printedToleranceStandard
MACH 1020Hz – 18kHznot printednot printed
MACH 2020Hz – 18kHznot printednot printed
MACH 608Hz – 20kHznot printednot printed
MACH 805Hz – 22kHznot printednot printed
Pro X1020Hz - 16kHznot printednot printed

Westone prints a frequency range for all 5 models here whose sheets have been read.

Not one of those ranges comes with a tolerance in decibels. Without a ±dB figure a range says nothing about how loud the headphone is at either end of it, which puts Westone with the majority: of the 490 models across this database whose maker prints a range, 58 print the tolerance.

The rows are not even called the same thing twice: 2 different headings across 5 models (“FREQ RESPONSE”, “FREQ. RESPONSE”).

No measurement is published here — only what was printed. The whole count, maker by maker, is in the frequency response audit.

What reaches 100 dB on all 5

The hardest of the 5 to drive is the Westone MACH 10: 0.50 mW and 0.20 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 19 to 96 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.

280 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 5, and the cheapest of them is the Apple USB-C dongle (EU) at $9. “Reaches” means the maker’s own published power figure is enough at that load; it is not a judgement of how it sounds.

Their lowest impedance is the Westone Pro X10 at 19 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 2.4 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 134 of the 169 sources that publish an output impedance manage that.

These counts use figures the source makers published themselves. A product that publishes nothing is not counted as a pass anywhere above, which is why the three numbers differ so much. The collection matcher runs the same arithmetic over whatever you actually own.

What the paperwork adds up to

Very little of what this site says about Westone came from them. That is not an accusation about how their products sound — it is a statement about their paperwork, and it is the reason those pages carry so many qualifiers.

The rule used here is the same for every maker and is described on the manufacturer index. Every figure behind it can be opened on the product page it came from, with the document it came from linked.

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