Although the M1 impresses on assembly, attention to detail and racy styling, its otherwise modest dress code doesn't quite communicate just how dear it is. Many speakers priced at a fraction look just as pretty and posh. Then again, in Denmark flash isn't a thing. They prefer the clean minimalism at the heart of the Scandi design aesthetic. Personally I have nothing against it. We don't know where the M1's HDF cabinets are made but it's likely that they're outsourced at the same Sino plant which builds for Sonus faber and Dynaudio. The M1's cheeks slope towards its narrow concave spine quite similar to its 01 stablemate but there are several major differences. The latter's flared openings on the cheeks to decompress the tweeter are replaced by a long round bore on the back. Aluminium braces between the inner cabinet cavities reinforce the M1 structure to make it more rigid. So does one long aluminium insert laid into the top. The M1's gently tilted enclosure slims towards the unusually narrow rear to mitigate internal standing waves and suggest visually agile sonics.

The 01's grainy matte-black dress baffle easily removed but not that of the M1. Would more force have done the trick? My loaners were mint and I intended to keep them that way. Either way, the forward aspects are identical so the M1 looks just as clean with its flared driver openings and logo just a hair beneath the mid/woofer. Three round cavities on its belly accommodate Ansuz Darkz isolators, two behind the front panel, one near the deep business-end channel. Just below the tweeter bore sits a large rectangular bass-reflex port interrupted by three skeletal aluminium vanes to break up air turbulence and room interaction. Vertically aligned bindings posts sit flush and accept only banana/BFA-style terminations. Luckily the 4cm-wide rear easily accepted the large wooden barrels of my Boenicke S3 speaker cables. The Børresen 01's minimal clearance hadn't supported that so I appreciated the useful rework.

Tweeter foils with tightly spaced voice coils to differentiate them from true transformer-coupled ribbons whose conductive metal foil is the voice coil.

The M1's 4.5" mid/woofer and planarmagnetic tweeter are sophisticated specimens manufactured in house. The dynamic driver's motor incorporates N52 neodymium magnets and two silver poles to lower voice-coil inductance to improve its linearity and current delivery. That results in quicker more responsive membrane strokes and lower acoustic impedance peaks. These silver rings cast from tiny pellets at the Aalborg facility then vacation inside cryogenic vats to further reduce their inductance by 6-8%. During the first 24 hours of this 3-day process all parts slowly cool down to -196°C and remain at that frosty temperature. On the last day they're gradually brought back to room temperature. The entire procedure takes this long to avoid thermal stress on the exposed materials. The M1 membrane is built upon a lightweight Nomex honeycomb core sandwiched between two spread-tow carbon-fibre skins with aramid honeycomb spacers. The company's signature Ansuz Supreme coating applied to the membrane's final titanium surface in a high-power impulse magnetron sputtering machine at a local university lab applies uniform nano layers of zirconium, tungsten and aluminium chrome nitride. All that hi-tech effort results in a very light super-stiff membrane to push unwanted breakup two octaves beyond its effective range. Most current Børresen speaker ranges are available in basic, Cryo Edition and Silver Supreme Edition versions. All M models already pack these otherwise optional upgrades.

Were I to highlight the M1's most unusual element, its mid/woofer basket is my pick. This alien-ware asymmetrical part prints from zirconium in 3D to get maximally stiff and non-resonant. Micro cavities fill with further zirconium powder to maximize self damping. This oddly shaped two-piece basket is unlike any other I've seen. It's extremely costly to make to consume several thousand euros each. The company's signature planar tweeter isn't usual either. Its large membrane based on a nylon/aramid substrate with aluminium voice coil weighs next to nothing for just 0.01g of moving mass. Although all Børresen tweeters share the same membrane thermally stable to 600°C, the M version applies the largest most powerful perforated motor. The M1 enclosure too underwent internal changes compared to the 01. The latter's two drivers shared internal space whilst a perforated HDF insert just behind the mid/woofer created higher back pressure to render it virtually invisible to the tweeter. The M1 drivers occupy separate compartments reinforced by 5mm-thick internal pressed-wood braces.

The M1 crossovers are rare series filters where both drivers share the same current flow while all out-of-band currents divert. This is more challenging to implement than the ubiquitous parallel network where each transducer sees its own current, frequency and phase content. Large Jantzen foil coils with paper insulation are vacuum-impregnated with resin to stabilize them mechanically. Arrays of small military-grade caps are stack-foil types of low inductance. The tweeter resistors are low-noise thermally stable metal-strip components. AGD are quite fanatical about minimal noise floors. So the M1 crossover PCB embeds their signature active square Tesla coils. Counter-polarized coils create cancellation of voltage spikes. The company's dither circuits based on ICs serve the same purpose by injecting squared frequencies into the signal to modulate the ground noise. These bits and the Tesla coils are active to need a DC-power feed provided via BNC just beneath the speaker posts. Ansuz Gold Signature hookup wiring is the group's best and designed to defeat aerial effects. Michael once explained that their conductors don't know how long they are. That makes them very bad antennae. It's tempting to say a word or two about the Darkz Z2s, a fascinating product in its own right. Since I reviewed it already, let's move to these stands. An HDF core between two titanium plates creates the anti-vibration perch for the M1. Its shape mirrors the M1's footprint and sports three suede-lined recesses for the Darkz. The winged concave leg adds a race-track aspect. The crossed plinth with height-adjustable aluminium footers is ready to decouple from the floor with the client's choice of Darkz isolators. By design their ball bearings introduce some play which nonetheless remains perfectly stable.