DUNU has a significant history in producing multi driver, hybrid IEM’s, which I am very fond of, because of their amazing sound and quality vs price ratio.
On this website, I have already reviewed the DN-2002, DK-3001, Titan 3 and Titan 5 across the years. The DN-2002 and DK-3001 are among my absolute favourite IEM’s ever.
The biggest complaint I have been reading about them, has been the size and comfort: to house their complex combinations of drivers, DUNU had to make some compromises in the size of the housing, which is a bit heavy for the ears of some people. I usually tame comfort issues by using comply foam tips, which are much more comfortable than silicon tips; still, smaller in-ear monitors are generally more comfortable, regardless of the tips used.
 

 
 
The new DUNU Falcon-C is a single dynamic driver In-Ear Monitor, which borrows from the sound signature of the DK-3001, while making the design simpler in order to achieve a smaller and ergonomic earphone.

As its bigger brothers, the Falcon-C has a removable cable. In the past I wrote that I would have prefered a better connector for the removable cable of DUNU’s (and other producers’) earphones, it’s finally been upgraded.

Sound Quality

The Falcon-C is a powerful sounding IEM, energic, slightly U-shaped, but tonally intense.
It has high speed, fast decays, and the capability to be toe-tapping, involving, using the bass-vs-treble balance as a mean to add up to the sense of pacing.
Just like its bigger brother (the DUNU DK-3001), it’s a “special” U-shaped frequency response, meaning that the powerful bass and extended highs are not burdening the midrange, which is actually very vivid and makes vocals full, never recessed.
 

 
 
Compared to the DUNU DK-3001 (which more than twice as expensive), the Falcon C has similar musical flow and balance between ranges of frequencies, but the DK-3001 have more control in the higher frequencies (slightly tilted, but never sibilant) and clearer layer separation.
The Falcon-C is slightly tilted in the upper midrange to middle treble, so that vividness is also accompanied by some sibilance in certain cases. Certain cymbals, especially on poorly recorded music, as well as certain singers with very sharp “s”, can sound a bit too hot. This issue was more noticeable before burn in, but got much more controlled after 40-50 hours of listening.
Compared to other neutral, bright sounding IEM’s, like Etymotic ER4, the Falcon-C sound more realistic, have similarly rendered treble, and have fuller, more natural bass, perhaps less deep in frequencies than ER4, but overall more tuneful with the rest of the music.

The soundstage of the Falcon-C is intimate, and in tune with the midrange vividness, making it especially tuned for rock, metal, jazz and generally music played by small groups. Classical music would take advantage of larger sounding headphones, which would render better the spatial localization of large orchestras.
 

 
 
Conclusion

The DUNU Falcon-C is a very comfortable IEM, that feels small in the ear, and have very appreciable sonic qualities. It’s realistic sounding, fast, detailed, ideal for several music genres. It takes obvious inspiration from the sound signature of the DK-3001. While not being quite up there in overall sound quality (the DK-3001 is a giant, and is much better than severall over 1k Euro headphones), it’s much more “portable”, comfortable, and never causes phisical discomfort. The removable cable is very good, the new MCX connector is sturdier than the one used before, promising much longer durability.
I would advice it to everybody that doesn’t listen mainly to poor recordings prone to sibilance, like rock from the 60s/70s: it’s, for all other purposes, a very convincing portable headphone for the go, and in the 200$ price range, it offers several desirable qualities for a very reasonable price