It comes quite as a surprise when I then play Keith Jarrett's "God Bless The Child" from the album Standards, Vol. 1: I don't remember the grand piano sounding so voluminous, almost fattish. And the bass drum produces a considerable amount of power as well, but lacks a bit of precision. The bass generated by the proximity to the rear wall is simply too much of a good thing for the 01s, that are perhaps not yet broken-in to a full one hundred percent. In addition, there are some details that get lost within the abundance of low frequencies. Even with Abdullah Ibrahim's "Calypso Minor", which also lives on the intensity of double bass and bass drum, the 01s tend to exaggerate a little in the lows due to standing close to the wall. Therefore the 01s change places to where a wide range of loudspeakers already used to fill my room with sound. With "Calypso Minor" the familiar fine resolution and promptitude returns. The bass drum and the darkly playing four-string develop a similar pressure the way I remember it from the Aeon Fine. "God Bless The Child" reveals its well-known details again and the groove creeps under your skin, while the bass drum seems to play a bit less voluminous than with my floorstanding speakers. Ravi Shankar's "West Eats Meat" sounds similar. The tablas in the intro are neither lacking speed nor low frequent energy, only the timpani in the subsequent main part of the track pan out with less power. And Shostakovich's "Polka" fascinates - as ever - with its good transparency, realistic spatial illusion and powerful tone colours.
It's unbelievable how much low-frequent energy the delicate 01s drag into the listening room with their 4.5-inch mid-woofers, even when standing relatively detached - the distance to the sides being about 65 centimetres, that to the rear wall more than a metre. This would never have crossed my mind when I first encountered the Børresen 01. Despite being very enthusiastic about the bass performance of this loudspeaker, I just would like to dispel any doubt about the other superb capabilities of this graceful and elegant two-way design, and so I make it explicitly clear: There aren’t even a handful of speakers out there that I know that play as homogeneously and thus free of technical artefacts as the Børresen. Moreover, in corresponding recordings they physically vanish from the sonic image completely, while the positions of voices and instruments or groups of instruments on the imaginary stage are clearly defined and seem immovable instead. Even if I now entitle the 01s – by having Michael Børresen's soothing words in my ear – to play at higher volumes, I cannot force them to sound annoying, nervous or compressed. Even with the best will in the world, I can't think of any word of criticism. Maybe that's why I keep taking a lively interest in the bass range, where I think that a bigger membrane could do better.
As described above, this hardly applies to Abdullah Ibrahim's "Calypso Minor". And that's why I can't resist giving the test track a quick replay before my wife and I, as we often do, knock off work with an aperitif and a new acquisition from Qobuz or an old ECM album from our record collection. Since the 01s find themselves back again in my listening room’s customary speaker position, and thus exactly level with the subwoofers, and particularly because of the now rich sounding bass drum and the powerful performing double bass, my wife suspected that I had attuned the Velodynes to the Børresen and simply resumed operation: What we heard, however, were no subwoofers, but merely an additional ten days of burning-in time for the 01s!
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