Borresen X3 measurements

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

@deep_333 PERFECT !

A lot of work to get a so called great speaker to sound good but im glad there is a path to do so  ,congrats

Or, check it out, here’s an idea, buy another speaker that does not need subwoofers, and bass management, and equalizations, and certain streamers to sound good….there must still be some of these around, right?

The biggest problem with measurements like those conducted by Erin, is they don’t take into account room modes and reflections, and don’t reveal what a listener will actually hear at their seat. The upper bass boost is probably intended to offset the bass null that occurs around that frequency in a typical listening room when the speakers are otherwise placed for optimal imaging (away from walls). It just so happens that those nulls tend to be around 10dB in magnitude IME.

If anything, for me, Erin’s results are evidence that speaker measurements are much less useful for determining sound quality than I had long thought. That’s because the X3s at their “street price” are without question the best sounding <$10K speakers I’ve experienced.

Recently, I had a very brief audition of their new C1 standmounts. Despite the brevity of that experience, I could immediately tell the C1s are likely the best sounding standmount 2-way I’d ever heard. And that’s despite having owned/heard many textbook-measuring speakers in my time.

When you think about it, it’s kind of bizarre that the audiophile community puts so much gravity into the conclusions of two psychoacoustic researchers who were once colleagues. In contrast, there is a far greater body of research conducted on cholesterol, and yet the experts can’t seem to come to a consensus on which is bad/good etc. The same applies to a multitude of other subjects.

#3 the lack of dynamic range. I have read people state they can play very loud but the data strongly suggests otherwise. This would explain why the X6 is made. I thought there might be something special with the tweeter but it shows heavy compression too.

I was surprised to see those results, because the X3s can play louder without audible distortion than any speaker I’ve owned. They seem to have incredible dynamic range in my room.