AXPONA 2025

At an early-morning breakfast, Michael Børresen, co-founder and chief designer of Audio Group Denmark, unveiled the Børresen M2 loudspeakers ($190,000/pair) and their companion Bass Modules (price to be announced). Also shown for the first time in North America was the Aavik R-880 phono preamplifier ($70,000), designed to work with DS Audio optical cartridges. The R-880 enables users to adjust high cut, low cut, and absolute phase on the fly.

Børresen described the M2s as an attempt to retain the sonic qualities of their inspiration—the larger M3s—in a cabinet sized for smaller spaces. Among the M2’s distinguishing features is a low-inductance driver containing a full pound of silver, and a specially developed magnet system.

“It took three years after I left Raidho to develop this magnet system, and eight years to complete the speaker design process,” Børresen said. “The heart of the speaker is its tweeter. Raidho was founded on this tweeter. With its extremely high mass, it has roughly 94dB sensitivity. We can’t even measure how high it goes.”

Company literature says that the bass modules are designed to complement the music with speed and timing, rather than merely adding deep bass.

Meanwhile, co-founder Lars Kristensen claimed that as many as half of all recordings are mastered with incorrect polarity. Among them are all recordings from Dire Straits, Lou Reed, and massive numbers of classical recordings. The Børresen team demo tracks included Friend ’n Fellow’s “What a Wonderful World,” Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” and Lene Marlin’s “A Place Nearby.” The system sounded grounded, clean, and exceptionally quiet, with solid bass, a superb midrange, and effortless detail retrieval.

Also playing: a Linn LP12-50 with DS Audio DS Master 3 optical cartridge ($87,000), and the Aavik SD-880 streamer-DAC, the C-880 preamp, and the P-880 power amplifier ($70,000 each). Add an Ansuz D-TC3 Gold Signature Ethernet Switch ($23,000), Mainz 8 Power Distributor ($64,000), and lots of cabling that includes Speakz speaker cables ($108,000/3m pair), and you have a system that sparkles like those sole-mounted diamonds.