The Børresen ribbon membrane of aluminium foil with bonded aramid/nylon layer is sourced from a specialty UK vendor. This new hi-tech material sports extreme thinness, extreme strength and thermal stability out to 600C°. It thus attains performance specs which far exceed Michael's now 10-year old ribbon for Raidho which has enjoyed such renown. His new ribbon is 96dB sensitive, a very friendly 6Ω, transformer-less and used in dipole mode through the triangular lateral Børresen vents.

Of course mechanical grounding features in all Børresen speaker models. A dismounted plinth in the next photo shows three circular openings for Darkz footers.

Once mounted, these remain inside the speaker, hence invisible. But the external floor couplers can still be upgraded with external Darkz. Børresen voice-coil formers are titanium as is the Ansuz rack.

Even the €100'000/pr 05 flagship speaker remains a 2.5-way to run its paralleled midranges around the tweeter without the high-pass filter of a 3-way. The four woofers add themselves to the mid/woofer bandwidth below 80Hz.

During my August 2019 visit, the size of the company was 16 strong. Next to the three joint owners Lars, Michael and Per Mortensen as head of marketing, there were Anders Pedersen as CFO, Iben Grøndal in logistics and Henrik Baade as head of production who oversees Helle Petersen, Andreas Pedersen and Thomas Pedersen. As technicians, there were Bjarne Hansen for speakers and electronics, Søren Kristensen for speakers and R&D and Mikkel Simonsen for general R&D. In sales, marketing and logistics, there were Frits Dalmose, Emil Kristensen…

… and, above, Ann Purkær Plaetner and ex-army sergeant major Morten Thyrrestrup. We also just saw the communal breakfast table and kitchen and one upstairs meeting room. Also upstairs was the current on-site listening room to which pending remodeling will add two downstairs rooms to accommodate the big flagship speakers and replicate the Aarhus demo facility for dealer/distributor training all under one roof.

Lars waited by the door until I had my photos.

Here I was treated to listening sessions conducted by Lars to hear the models 01, 02 and 03 and decide which one I wanted to review. Lars also performed more 'esoteric' experiments which I believe systems of lesser resolution would flatly fail to communicate. You might call this setup a very high-level sonic laboratory which transforms your ears into powerful microscopes.

Lars and Morten swapping in the 03.

The acoustics of this room were tuned by an Italian gent who, after an accident and two months in a coma, had awoken with an extra sense. He now 'sees' air turbulences, perhaps a bit like how Franck Tchang of acoustic resonator fame perceives them. Like with QRT, Lars and Michael remain intensely open to and curious about discoveries and solutions that might operate well beyond current text books. They readily admit that many of these things still elude scientific explanations. They'd simply feel daft to disregard them if their ears tell them that they work. In the next photo, we see the Darkz ball-bearing devices between the upright segments of the Ansuz titanium rack. More Darkz sat between the cross braces and laminate shelves; more between shelves and components.

With noise in the mechanical and electrical domains, you can never have too much reduction. More subtraction of noise equals more of the original signal. The proof thereof was certainly in the pudding. Without fail, all related changes in this upstairs system were always and easily audible. And, this system could play unbelievably loud yet always clean, poised and fast of reflexes.

An overriding principle of Michael's design work is the reduction of inductance across their portfolio. The lower the inductance, the more current will flow on demand. With his Model 01 monitors for instance, the first impedance spike of the typical saddle response of a ported alignment occurs at an enviably low 12Ω. The minimum impedance is 5Ω. Typical ported designs can exhibit impedance peaks of 50Ω or more. The Model 02 with a nominal 4Ω impedance has its first port impedance peak at just 6Ω whilst the second port peak is nearly gone. Thus Børresen ports are far less room reactive than common ports.

Whilst the standard speaker finish is Walnut, black or other colors are available by special request. Here we see the Model 02 in satin black.

You don't think that you could tell the difference between an anodized aluminium versus titanium record clamp of otherwise identical size and geometry? You refuse to believe that you'd notice the effect of activating the dielectric of applicable Ansuz cables with an external power supply like AudioQuest and Synergistic Research do it? Do you assume that plugging additional Tesla-coil units into spare PowerBox outlets would be redundant and sheer excess?

With this front-to-back Ansuz/Aavik/Børresen system, the resolving power from a very low noise floor plus the speed and dynamic response of extreme transducers was of very high caliber so any such changes registered unequivocally. Because my reviews will cover sonic details and more tech, I'll merely say at this juncture that the big names in hifi ought to be on high alert. Code red, no purple prose required!