A hearing business first, a music brand second.

Westone began as a hearing business, not a music one. According to a report in The Hearing Review in October 2025, it was founded in 1959 by Ron and Mickey Morgan at their kitchen table in Divide, Colorado, a small mountain town west of Colorado Springs. English Wikipedia names the founder as Ron Morgan Sr. and says the company was later run by his son, Randy Morgan. As Westone Laboratories, it grew into a maker of custom earmolds for hearing aids, custom hearing protection and supplies for audiologists, and it is based in Colorado Springs.

Its music work came later, and grew out of that trade. Westone Audio says it began making custom earpieces for listening “around four decades ago.” Its timeline dates its first custom earpiece for “Walkman” style earbuds to 1985 and its first use of balanced-armature drivers — the tiny drivers long used in hearing aids — in custom earpieces for musicians’ monitors to 1989. It says it worked with Rush and Def Leppard in 1990 on the first custom in-ear monitors, and designed ambient monitors for Metallica in 1995.

The trade press puts it more cautiously. In 2014 The Hearing Review wrote that Westone had “reportedly worked with Def Leppard, Van Halen, Rush, and other elite musicians since the early 1990s to develop some of the first in-ear monitoring systems.” In 2020 the same magazine called Westone Audio “a pioneer of the custom in-ear monitor market in the 1980s.” We give the firsts as Westone’s own claims.

Shells for Ultimate Ears, a monitor for Shure.

Westone’s best-documented role in the in-ear story is as a manufacturer for other brands. When the Van Halen monitor engineer Jerry Harvey started Ultimate Ears in 1995, it contracted Westone to make the acrylic shells for its custom monitors, Inc. magazine reported in 2007, and Westone also assembled them. Westone’s own timeline describes the arrangement as “Ultimate Ears (UE) by Westone Audio” and says the two introduced the UE5, a dual-driver monitor. It also says it created the E5 for Shure, “the first universal-fit dual driver musicians monitor,” and places it in 1996; English Wikipedia’s Ultimate Ears article, citing a 2007 interview, credits Harvey with helping Shure produce the E1 and E5, so both sides claim a part.

The partnership ended badly. By 2001, Inc. reported, Westone was setting up its own distribution in Europe and held the trademarks and patents associated with Ultimate Ears; Ultimate Ears built its own lab in 2002 and later settled with Westone out of court, keeping its brand. Westone launched products under its own name in 2002, it says — the UM1 and UM2 universal-fit earphones and the ES2 and ES3 custom monitors — and the ES models became its Elite Series.

Later landmarks, by its account, included the eight-driver W80 universal flagship and the AM Pro, which it calls the first universal passive ambient musicians’ monitor, both in 2016, and a patent for passive ambient monitors in 2019. The Hearing Review reported that the eight-driver ES80 custom would be unveiled at the NAMM show in Anaheim in January 2017, and that the six-driver W60 had won Digital Trends’ “Best in Show” award for headphones at CES in 2014.

The custom in-ear trade.

The seven brands here make earphones that sit in the ear canal, but they come from different trades. Some grew out of hearing health and earmould laboratories, others out of touring, where custom-moulded monitors replaced loudspeakers on stage.

Etymotic Research was founded in 1983 by the audiologist Mead Killion in Elk Grove Village, Illinois; in 2018, The Hearing Review reported, Lucid’s parent, Hearing Lab Technology, took a controlling interest, and in 2020 Lucid Audio bought Westone Audio from Westone Laboratories. Westone Audio says it was acquired in 2026 by The Fidelity Collective, whose Irving, Texas, address now appears on both brands’ websites; Westone Laboratories, the Colorado hearing-health firm, was bought by TLS Sound Labs in 2025.

JH Audio, founded by the monitor engineer Jerry Harvey, says its earphones are built in Orlando, Florida; Sound Devices, part of the Audiotonix group, announced its acquisition in May 2025. Empire Ears, which said it was family-owned and hand-made its monitors in Norcross, Georgia, announced that it closed in February 2026.

Vision Ears says it has made in-ear monitors by hand in Cologne since 2013; it was founded by Marcel Schoenen and Amin Karimpour, who its legal notice lists as managing directors. Noble Audio, founded in 2013 by John Moulton, now trades as Noble HiFi, LLC, of Whitehouse, Texas, and says John and Jim Moulton each own half. Unique Melody says it was founded in 2007 and gives its address as Zhuhai, in Guangdong, China.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

One name, two companies.

Ownership has changed several times. The Hearing Review reported in 2014 that the private-equity firm CID Capital had bought Westone Laboratories in 2011; by 2020 the company was part of HealthEdge Investment Partners. In June 2020 Westone Laboratories sold its music division, Westone Audio, to Lucid Audio, the hearing-products company that had bought Etymotic Research in 2018, and Westone Audio’s management and operations moved to Lucid’s facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, the magazine reported. The two halves have had separate owners since. In October 2025 Westone Laboratories was bought by TLS Sound Labs, a family-owned custom earmold lab in Santa Cruz, California. “Today, Westone Laboratories is once again family owned,” its chief executive, Justin Stack, said. Westone Laboratories’ website describes its products as “Proudly Made in the USA.”

Westone Audio says that “in 2026, Westone Audio was acquired by The Fidelity Collective, returning the company to private hands,” and its privacy policy names Fidelity Collective LLC of Irving, Texas; we found no independent report of the deal. The company also says its customs lab “was shuttered in 2024” and that plans are in motion to reopen a custom manufacturing facility “within the next year.” It does not say where its universal models are made, so we make no claim. Its current range is universal-fit: the MACH series, with up to eight drivers; the Pro X series, built for the stage; and the AM Pro X, with a built-in ambient filter it calls StageSense.

For a design guide, Westone shows how a hearing-healthcare lab became a music brand — and how that brand can part from the lab that made it. Compare Ultimate Ears, whose early monitors it built, and Shure, for which it says it made the E5. For this guide we use a Front Range blue and a slate grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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