At every trade show, the X3 has for now enjoyed my particular attention. Its appearance paired with an affordable price range completely unknown for Børresen to date simply has a strong appeal to me. The X3 offers anything but the impression of an entry-level speaker reduced to the bare essentials.

Børresen and the Audio Group Denmark in general are known for exaggeration. Usually, good isn’t good enough here; instead, they research, try out, and don't shy away from unconventional approaches until the end of the road has been reached. And when a new idea comes up that promises even a hint of a better performance quality, the the Danes are not above simply adding another one. The effort and correspondingly the price then no longer play a role. A good example of this philosophy is the mid-woofer used in the M series. This driver is a fantastic miracle of technology. On the one hand, this quest for perfection is quite admirable, being exactly the propellant that drives also many of us high-end afficionados. On the other hand, I can as well understand when people think that our Danish audio neighbours are having their heads in the clouds, especially with regard to the price tags of their speakers and electronics. However, since they are still largely concerned with passion in addition to perfection, the X series and the new Axxess amplifiers are definitely offerings that are accessible to a broader group of buyers.

The X3 was the first model in the X series to see the light of day. Meanwhile, a larger X6 model is also available and a smaller version should, at least according to my information, join the portfolio sooner or later. As is typical for Børresen, the medium-sized X3 is designed as a two-and-a-half-way system with a mid-woofer, two woofers and the likewise typical magnetostatic tweeter. However, the positioning in the center of the portfolio should not hide the fact that the X3 is already a very large speaker with a height of almost 130 centimeters and a depth of considerable 60 centimeters.

The entire team at Børresen had assured me several times that the X3 would work even in my smaller-than-average listening room with a short, recording studio-like listening distance to the speakers. Each time I got to see the speakers at trade shows, my doubts in this regard simply could not be dispelled. Basically, I take the view that it is possible to make large loudspeakers sound good in small listening rooms and I claim that I have succeeded in doing so with my own loudspeakers. So far, at least all invited and sometimes, I would like to say, very qualified listeners were surprised how well my, compared to the X3 rather medium-sized, floor-standing speakers Magnat Quantum 807 work in my room. The DSP correction possibilities of the speakers within the roon software certainly plays a decisive role. The ability to have roon performing a convolution filtering was the main reason for me to switch to roon and roon-enabled devices. But the first priority still remains the acoustic treatment of the room with absorbers and diffusers. However, in my room it does make sense to run the speakers fairly close to the rear wall, so I use roon's Convolution feature to reduce superelevations caused by room modes. I have been working towards an ideal equalization over a longer period of time, taking care not to adulterate the natural character of the speakers. Therefore I correct both loudspeakers independently of each other. To measure and correct both speakers at the same time would only be a part of the story. There is a single very broadband cut at about four thousand hertz on the right speaker to perfectly smooth out the already very linear frequency response of both speakers when added together. All other correction parameters refer exclusively to the bass range up to a maximum of 130 hertz. The rest of the frequency response remains untouched. In principle, all these measures I would easily be able to apply to the X3 and in the meantime, due to the exact knowledge of my room, also implement in the shortest possible time with a similarly optimal result, but it was the sheer size of the speakers that kept worrying me. Due to my limited space, the number of reasonable setup options reduces as the size of the speakers increases. My doubts were again fuelled when the carrier unloaded the pallet with the two monstrous speaker crates in front of my door. What had I let myself in for? Having them initially arrived and unpacked in the kitchen, the full extent of my undertaking becomes apparent. In my small apartment, the X3s, which are quite large for a three-way loudspeaker, seem even more enormous than they used to at trade shows. At 55 kilograms, they are above all enormously heavy. But my fascination for the X3 remains undiminished: Design, workmanship and feel are still incredibly appealing and of high-quality for the tagged price of 10,000 euros. The backwardly curved enclosure with an unshakably massive plinth could just as well originate from a high-end series far beyond the 10,000 euros tag. The carbon inlays on the front and top of the cabinet matching the drivers then provide the final touch. However, they are hardly intended for weight reduction or stiffening, but rather as a design feature.

However, enthusiasm isn’t going to be enough here, the X3s have to be moved into the listening room with full use of physical strength. There, I first position them on my usual speaker places. Due to the elongated design of the speakers, the rear side of the cabinet comes absurdly close to the rear wall. My personal conclusion to be drawn at this point is that this can't work at all. But it does. Of course, the lows are rather salient, but by no means squashy or uncontrolled. Despite their closer proximity to the rear wall, the X3s behave very much like my own speakers. But it’s going to get even more absurd. Along the first test tracks, the soundstage already appears airy and holographic, but the feeling is beginning to grow that the distance between the Børresen speakers should be chosen even larger to make them reach their full potential. Consequently, I push them as far as at all possible to the side walls and thus directly into the corners of my room. And surprisingly, the speakers acknowledge this with an even more open, three-dimensional soundstage. In addition, it is still necessary to experiment further by changing the inward angle of the speakers. A closer look into the instruction manual reveals that the speakers are already positioned according to the manufacturer’s recommendation. The imagined lines originating orthogonally from the baffles should run over the listener's shoulder and meet about one meter behind the head. Only the inner flanks of the speakers should remain visible. After running through a bit of trial and error, I reach the conclusion that in my listening room I prefer a slightly more angled-in version. Therefore, being able to see the first millimeters behind the baffle’s rounded edge, I merely can guess the inner flanks of the speakers. Due to the short listening distance, the speakers still aim at a point behind my ears, but not pointing directly at them. However, their hotspot is now less than a meter away from my head. All in all, the speaker placement is more than unusual. It’s closer to the walls on all sides than I've ever positioned a speaker before, but it doesn't seem to bother the X3s in any way. On the contrary, they seem to feel really comfortable now.

Recently I came across the song "Coup D'etat" from Level 42’s album World Machine, leaving the impression as particularly well-produced pop music, while listening to it over an inappropriately used KRK studio monitor during some soldering work. It seems to me to be a suitable opening track for testing the X3. I get started, of course, without any EQ adjustment of the speakers to my room. Before thinking about anything else, I make the observation that the X3s without question offer the highest groove factor of any speakers having visited my listening room to date. They whip out the song with such playfulness, ease and dense energy as if it were a trifle. The various layers of the mix with clearly positioned snare and hi-hat, outward-stretched percussion elements, Mark King's characteristic bass playing and various synths are presented on a wide soundstage in an enormously airy, light-footed manner with a great tensional relationship to each other. Individual sound sources are reproduced with a generous individual expansion, as would be expected from a speaker of this scale. The individual instruments seem somewhat less sharp and selective, but they create an extremely attractive three-dimensionality. Since the instruments close ranks due to their individually greater extension, it stands to reason that the greatest possible distance between the speakers leads to the most convincing result. The musical events seem to rather take place in the listening room than being only reproduced as an image. The depth of the stage is very good, but still quite a significant bit away from the imaginary opening in my room’s rear wall that I sometimes imagine when listening to the Børresen 05 SSE in Dirk Sommer's listening room. Nevertheless I feel directly involved in the musical happening and less like in a concert room as a somewhat distant listener. However, both the size of the listening room and the listening distance have an effect on these impressions, but I think it is more than fair to state that a Børresen 05 produces a more impressive depth of stage than an X3 - apart from the connected audio system, of course.

Still, the rendition of Mark King's voice in the song's choruses is really fun. The arrangement of the song becomes a little less dense and changes from a driving to a more hovering style of playing. The main vocalist's voice is mixed more into the foreground and is a real treat. It sounds at the same time eerily smooth, velvety and pleasant, yet has a tangy, smoky core. How the X3s put this balance into practice is fantastic. Even if the recording is permeated by sibilants, they whether stand out unpleasantly at all, nor do they seem swallowed or overly blurred. The X3's attunement is simply incredibly well done. While fundamental and low-mid frequency ranges tend to prevail here, the ears get at no time overstressed with too much or even cutting highs, no detail is ignored. There is no sense of imprecision or roughness at any point. I cannot even remember the last time I heard a speaker that showed off as relaxed and laid-back, but without ever sounding boring or casual.

The next song on my list is "Tori (bird)" by the Nicolas Parent Trio from the album Tori. Starting quite calmly with a guitar melody, the track is slowly complemented by percussion on the right and double bass on the left channel. This piece also allows the speakers to reveal their more subtle character for the first time. Although the guitar plays only a few notes, every single pluck is accompanied by an incredible energy. The speakers’ tuning very much benefits their impulse response. In addition, the background noise actually seems to turn out particularly quiet. "Noise" in any form is, after all, one of the most treated aspects at Børresen. Probably for this reason, Børresen's "secret coils" developed for noise elimination were also installed in the tweeter path. The detailed striking of the strings is processed in a special way: While other speakers like to add an artificial sheen and sometimes even a certain sharpness here to reveal micro details of the recording in a more apparent way, the Børresen's tweeter renders them quite casually. And that is precisely what makes them so charming. The details are there, just not superficially, but woven into the overall tonality of the instrument. While this intensifies the aforementioned feeling of a musical performance that is really taking place in the listening room, it also leaves enough room for the recording to be able to express itself throughout the mid-range. I think that a slightly warm mid-range accentuation is meant when people widely talk about tonal colours. And the X3 is offering just the right amount here. As curious as I am, I then nevertheless set up a filter for the roon playback section, which deals with the bass boosts conditioned by the room and the speaker placement. The result are even sharper delineated lows than already present anyway. In direct comparison, I can no longer easily ignore my room modes without the filter, but it allows me to better understand how enormously well the huge speakers play in my comparatively small listening room. Yes, the sonic difference when applying the filter is clearly audible, and I personally would prefer setting the filter, but without filter there is no loss of accuracy or detail in the bass. And conversely, with the filter set, there is no change in the characteristics and timbre of the bass range. It remains forceful, impulsive, with that special punch and touch of well-being that I think is typical of Børresen, without ever sounding sludgy or boomy. Again, I don't think many manufacturers get such a kind of tuning done right.

The track "Limit to your Love", taken from James Blake's self-titled album and qualified for burning down almost any voice coil, lets me reach for it again. I especially like to use this song on my own system to demonstrate to skeptics how effectively my filter setting cleans up the low frequencies. In foreign spaces, the linearity of the bass range can usually be evaluated very quickly with this track, while incorrectly tuned cabinets can be unmasked at the same time. Without a filter, the extremely low synthesizer frequencies played in descending order very often turn out differently loud, as one of the frequencies hits a room mode exactly or at least is very close to it. For this track I keep the equalization filter in the signal path to create a better comparability to the familiar listening impression when fuelling my own loudspeakers. This experiment lets the Børresen prove their unshakable authority. And it’s precisely because of these lessons of experience that I explicitly advocate large speakers in small rooms. Although it is regularly argued that a bookshelf speaker is far away from exciting problem frequencies in the first place, being therefore much more suitable than a floor-standing speaker causing problems here, it is my opinion that this is only true until one knows how to address these problems. No bookshelf speaker in the world can get down to it with such a brutal punch, especially in the lowest lows. This simply requires membrane surface and cabinet volume. In this comparison, with carefully tuned correction of the bass boosts, the X3 really shows how to hit the nail on the head. The booming bass lines have a very slightly artificial and unpleasant character when played through my speakers. With the X3s, they appear to be perfectly natural, swaying and yet incomparably more powerful. The additional overlayed beat, James Blake's voice and a few isolated piano chords are depicted entirely unimpressed by the thunderstorming lows that my own speakers are unable to do. The different samples throughout the bass range are not only clearly distinguishable from each other in their different frequency areas, certainly favoured by the looped-in equalization filter, but also stand out three-dimensionally from each other with impressive precision. This latter ability is, in my opinion, one that is much more indicative of the quality of the drivers used. Consequently, when it comes down to it, the drivers can shovel air with a lot of pressure and, above all, control. Especially the lowest lows still carry a lot of energy, while the drivers are not prone to get easily ruffled. In rooms where a set-up is possible that doesn’t require any kind of DSP correction, the X3s should come into bloom once again. The X3s really are masters of gross motor skills. Particularly for listeners being accustomed to higher volumes, this characteristic should be a blessing. My power amplifier, however, stays cool at any time. The X3s appear to be impressively unpretentious in this respect as well as in placement.

Finally, I want to put the X3 through its paces with an unusual track and turn off my correction filter again. I attach importance as well to speakers being able to also process less audiophile songs in a convincing fashion, while having paid less attention to the fine motor skills of the speakers up to now. I recently discovered this song. It's performed by a small Seattle-based band called KGB, about whom little can be found. Their only album called Contra-intelligence originates from 1996 and has the wonderful subtitle "Fiddle tunes infiltrated by foreign agents". The song I listened to is called "Call it A Night”. I really dig the song because the instruments have been captured on the album in their natural form without banging the effects drum. Small imperfections such as the slightly scratchy bow attack are not covered up and the instruments seem intimate and fragile. The X3 prove that they also know how to sensitively reproduce recordings like these. The subtle harmonics of the piano chords are beautifully carved out. They also show that the tonality of the instruments is not entirely natural, but rather that there also happens to be an individual sound of the recording microphones and the room. Nevertheless, this piece of music remains enchantingly beautiful due to its simplicity, while being reproduced accordingly and not declassified by the speakers. On the contrary, the strummed, struck and bowed strings once again live up from the impulsiveness with which the X3 presents them in detail. This impulse response gives the recording a wonderful vivacity and immediacy that remains exciting and stimulating at all times, but always gentle and well-dosed.