Borresen X3 measurements

Y’all are fretting a bit much...

If i wanted a flat line just to please Amir/Erin, i could have just diy’d/built out a GR Research NX-otica or NX-Extreme on the cheap......and lived with over the counter lower quality drivers. It would sound fine and show y’all a flat line, for sure...Or get some sterile monitor.. Last i recall, every magnepan i had measured like true hiny, but i always loved the sound of it, etc

I never had this X3 ( i see 1 issue that’s relativley harder to fix, doable though)......But, i acquired the X6 used for 10k from a trust fund dude who seems to shed speakers quicker than socks, a deal i couldn’t refuse, couldn’t say no...no brainer for me. Will i sell my X6 with how its sounding? Hell, no...for the following reasons.

I had a plan...I wanted those high quality Borresen drivers and driver count, that I couldn’t just buy off the shelf, a speaker with good bones for playing with. I wanted those ’small’ drivers with the impulse response i need to carry through up to ~2.5khz before handoff to the ribbon. Cabinet has my preferred aesthetic and volume + finish i needed.

I have a custom crossover mod that i run with the tweeter level dropped lower (quite easy to do) and a slight bump about 2 db higher ~1k onwards before tweeter hand off for the spatial qualities i desire. This is very hard to otherwise find with the sheer cluster of flat hiny or bbc dip/trough speakers out there. Further, I have a low Q ~3db bump from ~80 to 250hz and Kef KC62 subs dovetailed on the low end getting down below 20 hz. At the end of it, no flat line but smooth low Q bumps exactly where i want it, just the way i like it...my modded X6 sounds like a less dark, spatially enhanced high clartity/resolution/detail version of a Pioneer S-1EX perhaps that cross-bred with a magnepan or something.. or if i almost turned on atmos at times, quite enjoyable i say. Maybe someday, i’ll go fully active with it or not.

I am sure if Michael Borresen wanted to give y’all a flatass line, he could do that in 30 mins. He has some hangup about not introducing a electrical phase shift with the bass/mid handover, whatever. Maybe, he was also trying to do something with this X3 as a ’lifestyle’ product as well, i.e., his majority market will put it in a living room or some suboptimal room modal hell, dinosaurs who refuse to use a sub, no treatment, etc where none of this mattered anyways.....

I mean... you could take my other speaker, a pristine measuring TAD, put it in some untreated living room modal hell, measure at your listening position and see what you get..keep looking for the long lost flat line boys.
Either way...don’t know...don’t care what exactly Borresen dude’s philosophy is.

P.S.
I actually run the X6 on very modestly priced electronics from Schiit. It never got "carried" by high end electronics and sounds like a million bucks.

And if Michael Borresen Designed those speakers

It is strong evidence against your claim that he is one of the most talented speaker

in the world!

He engineered very good drivers from scratch (not buy them from someone and throw it in a box or slap it on a board, call it a night like most duds out there)

There is some sht he did, it seems, to make it not "perceived" as too "bass weak" for the dudes who refuse to use subs....with these tiny drivers.

It needs to sell into closet sized European/Asian lifestyle rooms perhaps, not to mention the V curve lovers, etc,

I am fairly certain he could give you a flat line in 30 mins and lose his target market.

I would have gone active with it, slapped bash amps inside the cabinet...and said get some subs or go home on the website...Every guy and his uncle should be happy thereafter.

where I feel the measurements lack is in transients, or at least I don’t know what I am looking

Driver impulse response

Deep_333

is that in the measurements taken? I seen the step response to see driver alignment but that does show what is needed? Again maybe I don’t fully understand it. 

I assume the driver rise and fall time (and a function of surface area/efficiency) would show dynamics, but I am just guessing. 

No, he wouldn't have given you that.

You need specific accelerometers+conditoner+daq to get stuff like that with acceptable accuracy for such a mechanical driver.

(Test engineering never happened over the internet after someone read a klippel manual man.  Guys went to school and worked in field for years before they got into all the nitty gritty. What you got from the likes of asr is some feel good snapshot and that's it.)

X3 dudes

Step a) Get 2 kef kc62 subs. Face reality, the X3 small drivers are meant to do something else very good, not get you down to 20 hz and qualify as a full range speaker. It is also meant to be a sleek looking speaker, not some fat eye sore.

Step b) Get a amp with "true bass management", such as a Yamaha R-N2000A. (Not sure what else is out there..maybe rotel michi, etc). Send everything 100 hz and under to the subs and 100 hz & above to the borresen bass drivers...watch the X3 drivers spring to life and do what they do best.

Step c) Get something like a Wiim ultra streamer with peq and adjust to taste (actually, this unit has bass management too). RME dacs have peq, etc...or you could go full prepro non-purist like deep_333 (a very very non-puritan guy).

Reason is.....Everyone’s psychoacoustically adjusted hearing is different. You won’t hear what Erin did and rest assured that hamster hears all kinds of things (that he claims is subjective listening) after he sees the measurements.

Step d) Watch your X3 slay and filet the Harbethany priced twice as much, the Fleetwoods priced twice as much, other BBC junkboxes and all kinds of other junk in the 10k, 20k, price bracket.

Good luck

I can get the X3s to produce a 30Hz tone in my room.

It doesn’t matter...it is a 2.5way crossed into a ribbon.

For every lower bass octave you force a driver into, you force 4 times the driver motion, not the greatest thing when it also has to multitask with the upper octaves, You also create a lot of unnecessary cabinet chaos when you do such things..i.e why bass management and subwoofers are as important or more important than a tweeter itself.

If my X6 can have a huge benefit with the right subwoofer pairing+integration, I would wager that the X3 would benefit even more.

Everything should sound fine as is (good enough for govt work), but, above mentioned explorations are for dudes who like to watch the jaw dropping of other hifi enthusiasts.