Delivery by pallet occurred in pouring rain typical for the season. For that the black plastic wrap sealing the lot was perfectly prepared, the new delivery man less so. Once inside, the wood-composite reinforced double cartons revealed the expected thick custom foam cradles and white shroud of Aalborg.

Loosening the lock screws on one footer each had both speakers leveled in moments and the game was afoot because, in due anticipation of this assignment, I had already re-terminated our Allnic ZL5000 speaker cables with locking Furutech bananas.

Whilst real estate back there is tighter than Hong Kong, everything fit just so. Looking on, my wife commented on how very handsome these speakers were.

Here is the initial install which elicited immediate proof of life: iMac, Audirvana 3, Soundaware D300Ref as ultra-cap powered USB bridge with I²S-over-HDMI output, Denafrips discrete R2R Terminator DAC with 32 x oversampling to 1'411.2kHz, Vinnie Rossi L2 Signature preamp with Elrog ER50, LinnenberG Liszt monos.

As the very first thus only tweeter in residence, this ribbon did not exhibit the tell-tale intermodulation distortion on the opening "Humankind" of Dhafer Youssef's Sounds of Mirrors when his otherworldly falsetto head voice and Hüsnü Senlendirici's clarinet parallel between…

… 3:55 and 4:03, then once more at the next peak. Until now, I'd never heard this unison passage completely clean to wonder whether the recording engineer had fouled up and left a stinky for posterity. Finally I knew better. It simply took a truly extraordinary tweeter to sail through this passage without flapping. Carpe diem!

A close-up look at the mid/woofers—their diameter is exactly that of a CD and no more—showed just how thin the outer skin of non-woven carbon is. The hexa core of the central foam layer telegraphs right through.

Given their small size, the in-room power of the bass not bedeviled by the usual port impedance spikes was rather mind-boggling. Of course this could also put on quite a show of shuddering diaphragms shimmying inside their surrounds when sustained low bass made them work for it. I never see our bigger woofers get that worked up and out. It's part of the Børresen design brief to use unusually small drivers to the very ends of their bandwidth until the 05 flagship introduces its four 8" woofers per side.