Børresen X3 Floorstanding Loudspeaker Brand’s New Entry Point

The Børresen X3 loudspeaker is touted as a design with all the characteristics expected from the brand but, according to Børresen, with "a revolution in quality, performance and price".

Audio Group Denmark, the parent company of Børresen, Ansuz and Aavik, states that the Børresen X3 floorstanding loudspeaker marks the creation of an entirely new entry point into the Børresen loudspeaker range, underlining that the X3 retains Børresen Acoustics' development traditions, design philosophy and technological know-how.

We're told that the biggest challenge for the Børresen engineering team was to create an entry-level loudspeaker that was more affordable yet still had the typical Børresen DNA and quality standard. So, firstly, they had to determine which technologies and components from existing speaker models would significantly impact sound performance and guarantee the well-known Børresen qualities. The next task was deciding how to make such a loudspeaker more cost-effective.

Michael Børresen and his team of designers and engineers drew on the development process and technology of the newly created Børresen M1 membrane. This membrane is designed to achieve maximum stiffness with minimum noise and was designed, developed, and assembled in-house. After working through several variations, they finally created the X3 planar ribbon membrane consisting of three skins laminated into a single unit: two layers of spread carbon fibre with a layer of aramid honeycomb spacers in between.

The carbon fibre provides a skin with optimal stiffness, reducing sound-disturbing vibrations and resonances. Additionally, the manufacturer tells us that the aramid honeycomb has the best vertical stiffness-to-weight ratio. This "flat response membrane in terms of resonances" paved the way to build a very transparent loudspeaker with a smaller magnetic motor system which optimised costs.

The X3's magnet motor system uses double copper caps on the pole rings, as found in the Børresen Z-series, to achieve high flux and low inductance. Audio Group Denmark says they have found that copper produces a flatter inductance curve and lower electromagnetic resonance. Lower inductance also means fewer spikes in the impedance curve. Both result in a lower load on the amplifier. To ensure high efficiency, the X3 has two pole rings. Unfortunately, this causes the loss of some flux, which reduces efficiency from 94 dB to 88 dB. The overall sensitivity for the X3 is listed as 90 dB/1w.

The vented tweeter operates from 2.5 kHz upwards, and thanks to its low moving mass (0.01g), the fully concealed tweeter promises to be hugely responsive. Moreover, due to its "high robustness," it can handle very high transients without causing any deafening dips.

The tweeter is teamed with a 4.5-inch midrange driver and a pair of 4.5-inch woofers. The Børresen X3 features a parallel crossover built with the same high-quality components from the Z Series. The quoted frequency range for the X3 is 35Hz – 50KHz.

The 50.8 x 13.6 x 23.9-inch (HxWxD) cabinet is made of a heavily braced wood composite material that eliminates sound distortion and mitigates mechanical influences, especially hysteresis, according to Børresen. In addition, the cabinet's six bass reflex ports are tuned for "musically relevant frequencies".

The surface of the cabinet is finished in black or white piano lacquer and reinforced with optical carbon fibre inserts.

The Børresen X3 loudspeaker is available now priced at £10,000/ €10,000.