My Westone 3s just broke and sadly are out of warranty, so rather than pay nearly $200 to fix them, it seems I might need to go for another pair. I'm fairly committed to Westone as I liked the sound of the 3s a good bit, but I'm open to ideas. I probably do not want Ultimate Ears as they look way too big.
Sound-wise, what I want is something very neutral, the very opposite of Hyped Bass by Dr. Dre. Something useful for evaluating my recordings, with crisp, natural highs and a reasonably flat bottom end. My only complaint about the Westone 3s would be that I felt they had a bit of an LF bump I was not crazy about.
The people at Westone tell me the Westone 4, which has another bass driver, will be more neutral than the 3. Their description of the UM3X, which I know is designed to be a live musician's monitor, kind of made no sense to me. Has anyone here A/B'd the two or have any thoughts on the differences? I guess given that I broke my 3s, if the UM series are any more durable, that'd be good to know, too.
In this price range, the other product I know of that I would consider is the Shure SE535. I own a pair of Shure SE315s (or the earlier model equivalent) that I use in the field, and I don't really have anything bad to say about Shure or the quality of these (relative to their much lower price). I thought the Westones blew the less expensive Shures away, but that's not to say the same is true of the Shure 535. I do note that the 535s page has as its first feature "Rich bass", which may or may not be what I'm looking for.
Any thoughts? One bummer about these is I think it's probably fairly difficult to go somewhere and A/B them, especially as Westone has few dealers.