Fast 'n' furious. It's how over the weeks ramping up to Vienna's first HighEnd show, the news releases dropped daily. Hifi brands I never hear from throughout the year asked me on a cosy first-name basis to book appointments and see their latest and greatest. Of course I stopped attending shows years ago. My reasons for it are well publicized by now. But I do look; from the distance. This year I shall keep my beady eyes peeled on reports covering the exhibits of Norse brands Ø Audio and Børresen. Last year the Norwegians previewed Varg [right], a 4 x 15" passive subwoofer with analog outboard crossover. They referred to the tall box as simply "slot-loaded" which certainly looks factual. But hardly anyone in the press bothered to mention or inquire about it. They probably didn't recognize what it was. To me it looked like a twin-stacked RiPol so Ridthaler dipole aka folded open baffle. I've championed this directional velocity-converter approach for years as the best way for reproducing bass in a home environment. That's because it embeds superior self damping, lowers resonant woofer frequencies and triggers far fewer room reactions due to an asymmetrical dispersion pattern with lateral dipole cancellation. With a year having gone by since the final Munich show—final unless it moves back as I've heard rumoured—I hope for far more Varg noise this time around. That's if the concept has come to fruition and not been abandoned.
Meanwhile Børresen had already picked up the official RiPol baton with their 4 x 8" BM3 [below] which embeds its class D Pascal-based drive electronics and fully analog filter circuits at the bottom of the cab then adds a nice display plus remote control. At ~€18K, it positions at our sector's high end. For Vienna 2026, I'm thus dreaming of a lower-priced variant. From my experience with this breed, a single pair of 8" woofers won't apply sufficient cone surface to work properly. Yet so far Børresen's diameter gauge has maxed out at eight inches. They prefer to parallel those woofers as needed: twelve per channel in their €1'000'000 flagship speaker. That would make this BM3 their most compact and affordable such sub already. Sniff?
Why my Nordic dreams, you ask? Because the RiPol segment remains poorly served; and mostly well off the mainstream. That eludes the vast majority. Whilst Cygnus, ModalAkustik, sound|kaos and Voxativ have had such subwoofers for years and Bastanis/Zugspitz, daudio, Ecobox and Treble Clef integrate them into passive speakers, none of them are exactly mainstream brands. Where Voxativ have gone as mainstream as widebanders can probably hope to get, it's still very much a niche segment. Of all the brands that have embraced quasi-cardioid or 'super'-dipole subwoofers to date, I view Børresen and Ø Audio as packing the greatest potential for popularizing this concept. Introductions happen through reviews, dealerships and global show presence. Actual sales require domestically acceptable dimensions; and pricing lower than just the well-heeled can handle. But before the concept ever becomes desirable, punters must first know of it then understand why it operates so different from the ubiquitous pressure generators of omnipolar bass radiation regardless of sealed or ported loading. Will Vienna be a step in that direction? It would require not just the right hardware but demonstrations which properly explain how this concept works when to the naked eye and from the front, things look like any other box just with a vertical slot in it.
Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
A guy can even wake up and find the dream come true two days later. Enter Børresen's €9K BM2 announced June 4th. With a 30-170Hz 4th-order adjustable active low pass executed in the analog domain, digital latency is a thing of the past. It no longer needs to be compensated with forward placement whereby a sub sits closer to us than the speakers. Bypass transfers the frequency-splitting and gain setting job to an external crossover like spl's Crossover MkII; or an Aavik component with built-in hi/lo-pass function. The BM2 runs Pascal-based class D power with matching switch-mode power supply. Ansuz Darkz mechanical ball-bearing isolators can fit into the sub's bottom receivers. Dims are 37×38.5×42.5cm WxDxH, weight is 22.5kg. The woofers are two Shallow10 Neo units so 10-inchers. Neo could mean neodymium; or simply 'new'. The BM3's gloss finish goes matte, the display and remote interface bye-bye. Et voilà, the missing link in my multi-year campaign for more compact full-featured RiPol subs. Bravo, Børresen!
