In-Ear Fidelity

DUNU DK-4001: First Impressions and Measurements

Just got these in the mail. The DK-4001 is DUNU’s newest flagship, retailing at 900USD and sporting a hybrid setup of 4 BAs and a single dynamic driver.

This unit was kindly provided by the folks at DUNU.

As usual, the glam shots:

Initial impressions

The DK-4001 seems to be tuned relatively neutral but also has its quirks and colourations. There is a suppression of the upper midrange which diminishes the “bite” of female vocals and brighter-leaning brass instruments. There’s a relatively prominent lower-mid treble emphasis as well, but this emphasis is not within range of cymbals or claps.

I’d say that the strongest point of the DK-4001 is the bass response. Hits are clean, there’s no midbass bloat and there’s a well-controlled sub-bass focus. Rumble comes through well-articulated and doesn’t detract from any other part of the frequency response as a whole.

Imaging sounds about average, nothing much to say. The stage doesn’t diffuse outward too far and there’s a slight claustrophobia in the placement of the instruments. Not a particularly strong choice for live recordings for my money.

And of course, the measurements:

Full review in the coming days, which of course includes the final ranks. Patrons of my Patreon (all tiers) will get early access whenever it comes out.

14 thoughts on “DUNU DK-4001: First Impressions and Measurements”

    1. I found no correlation between those measurements and “sound quality”. I have done quite a few CSD and impulse measurements but I won’t be publishing them as I think the probability of them being used incorrectly by inexperienced users are much higher than being interpreted by people who know what they’re doing.

      1. Interesting. My experience has shown the opposite – there is no straight correlation between frequancy responce and “sound quality”. However CSD, square wave and impulse responses could tell a lot more about technical abilities of headphones.

        1. I’ve never correlated FR and “sound quality”, though I do think that FR shows flavour and signature which are also very important metrics.

  1. Hi Crinacle,
    could you add few examples of songs with lack of famele’s vocals “bite”? Dont think there is big issue vocals in DK-4001. Aren’t “in your face”, but sound lifelike.

    There is also decent amount of upper treble and stage width is quite impressive. Maybe there is something with tips/foams you use?

    1. It doesn’t seem like he’s criticizing the vocals. He’s just making a remark on the way it is tuned, which is specifically intended to soften vocal harmonics of the upper midrange and lower treble. Vocals still happen to come off as quite detailed and realistic. However, they do not have quite the same amount of forward projection and width as earphones like the Solaris, and Fourte.

      I agree that treble extension is better than what it appears to be. Sometimes, a treble peak around 9 ~ 10 kHz can give a sense of illusion that a pair of earphones has good treble extension, but it’s really masking the lack of treble extension. I did not detect this kind of masking with the 4001.

      Soundstage can be quite variable on the 4001 in my experience. It’s highly dependent on fit, and getting the right depth of fit without running into driver excursion problems related to driver flex can be a little challenging. However, irrespective of fit, it doesn’t seem to have as good treble extension as the Andromeda, which is on the other side of $1K but is still similarly priced.

  2. Tried these at CanJam NYC, one of the distributors had a demo, though Dunu wasn’t there. For my personal taste, I found lower treble to be rather harsh. Loved the cable, compact design, comfortable fit, but I couldn’t get pass that treble, probably should have tried it with foam tips instead of FA type-E.

    1. Have not tried FAD Type-E with them, but the 4001 seem to be tuned with the SpinFit tips that come with the earphones in mind, which are themselves a very slightly modified CP145 model. The 4001 is, regardless of tip selection, quite fit dependent. Treble resonance can vary from borderline harsh to quite reasonable. However, it’s still the least treble-harsh hybrid from DUNU in recent memory.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *