Cube Audio Nenuphar Single Driver Speaker (10 inch) TQWT Enclosure

I wanted to tip my hat to everyone who has been active in this thread. After months of research, I’m pretty solid on the idea of building my own cabinets this summer and eventually purchasing a pair of Cube F10 Neo drivers... Pretty great that Cube offers this as an option, and also openly shares their cabinet design. As a guy with plenty of woodworking experience and not a huge audio budget, this is right up my ally.

This thread verified multiple times that my Yamamoto A-08s 2wpc 45 SET amplifier should be a beautiful match for low to moderate level listening in a ’far nearfield’ situation, maybe in the range of 6-9 feet from each speaker. When I first looked at Cube, I wrote them off because I figured 92dB sensitivity was too low for my 45s... however, given the easy / flat impedance and particular design of this unique driver, it sounds like it should be suitable.

My current speakers, a set of Omega CAMs, are rated 94.5dB, and I have all the volume I need while staying far away from the Yamamoto’s power limits. I don’t think a 2.5dB loss in efficiency will be earth shattering, but I’m only working off of theory here... Of course, the idea that the Cube will be an upgrade over my Omegas is pure theory as well :).

Hi @djembeplay sounds like a great project. What design are you considering and type of wood? Just in case you are not aware, the plans on the Cube website are different to what they use for their own complete builds. 

Yamamotos will be a great match I would think.

@djembeplay 

I believe that your Yamamoto 45 amplifier will be a very good pairing with the Nenuphars given the intended use.

Charles

Hi @toetapaudio - glad to hear your endorsement for the Yamamoto.  For the cabinet, I'm planning on building the plan on their site that's labeled "F10 Neo / F10 DIY cabinet" at 1000mm x 600mm x 320mm.  This looks like the closest of the two designs they published to what they are using in the Nenuphar.  I'll build everything exactly to plan, except my material may end up being slightly thicker -- I'm thinking about using 3/4" stranded or vertical bamboo ply, built over an inner box of 1/4" or 3/8" Baltic Birch, with a thin silicone layer between the two materials... sort of a 'ply - spring - ply' layer.  This will let me build the inner box with less attention to aesthetics (exposed fasteners, rough edges, etc.), while creating a form with exact right angles to layer the bamboo on top of.  Those are the plans for now at least... Summer is still a ways off, and parable quotes of mice and men applies suitably here.

Like you, I did notice that the Nenuphar is built differently to the published design I'm looking at.  The two major differences I can see is that the Nenuphar is 500mm deep instead of 600mm, and it's bottom ported instead of rear ported.  It's also listed as being 5mm higher, but this might be taking the gained height of the front floor spikes into account.

I do wonder why there is a difference between the Nenuphar and the DIY plans... I'm planning to write Cube to ask them.  Perhaps they have a proprietary design in the Nenuphar that they don't want to publish for marketing reasons, which would be understandable... or, perhaps they just updated their design at some point and haven't likewise updated the DIY plans... shrug.

@charles1dad Thanks also for fortifying my thinking about the Yamamoto -- we in the low watt SET camp have to tread very carefully with our speaker selections, so it’s good to know I’m not ’off in space’ thinking this would be a nice combo.