BØRRESEN 03 Cryo

The Børresen 03 is a second-from-the-top speaker in the range of 8 models. It is a 2.5-way speaker, with 35Hz-50kHz frequency response, 88dB sensitivity, and 4 ohms of impedance.

The ultra-light mass of the famous – and improved - tweeter (.01g) allows for exceptional speed, air, transient handling, and all the details that we are used to from previous Børresen’s designs. The tweeter section is vented to balance out the build-up of air pressure: that is why there are two sizable gill-slots in the upper part of the cabinet. Although the high efficiency ribbon tweeter is at the heart of the Børresen 03, this time it is supported by newly developed midrange and bass sections.

Børresen calls it an “iron-free revolution” and it means that the motors of the new drivers are designed without the use of any iron: 4 opposing neodymium ring-magnets are used to squeeze the flux lines together over two solid copper discs, which now act like pole pieces. The solid copper pole rings act as very effective heat sinks and reduce voice-coil inductance to an exceptionally low value of 0.04 MH (less than 10% of regular standard drivers). A much lower induction means a much faster driver, with no lag. This impacts the overall loudspeaker performance which now becomes much more refined and very detailed. Lower induction also causes less resonance impedance variation, which means less phase angles and less impedance variation for the driving amplifier. Bass performance becomes very tight, well focused, and more authentic, according to Børresen. The copper rings can be substituted on request by silver ones, see the footnote. Also, the membranes of the drivers have acquired hi-tech solutions to improve stiffness to weight ratio: they are a composite of a 4 mm Nomex honeycomb core sandwiched between two layers of very thin carbon.

While a lot of money had been obviously spent on R&D, the cabinets are less impressive. Not that the Scandinavian furniture design is unattractive, yet for the asking price I think we deserve a bit more. One notable fact is that between the cabinet and the speaker’s bottom plate there are Ansuz Darkz T2S resonance control decouplers built-in (Audiodrom reviewed them here). Another set of Darkz should be used between the feet and the floor – this needs to be purchased extra, however.  

The other notable fact is that the Børresen 03 speakers have been designed to accept banana terminated speaker cables only, preferably the Ansuz ones. The terminals are recessed and there is no room to connect anything else. For this review, adaptors were used to connect the cable terminated with spades.