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 @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.

@toetapaudio Likewise, I’m new to building speaker cabinets as well -- but, I have decades of woodworking and cabinet building to my credit, so I’m all ’tooled up’ for the job.

I just had a look at the Woden Designs page and found a design based around the Magus driver, called the "Rubik". I couldn’t load any info about it though. I’m not sure how it would play compared to Cube’s own design... I’d probably take the conservative route and opt for the latter, in the face of the unknown.

I like the idea of bamboo. I’ve been gathering what info I can about it over the past few weeks. It’s extremely stiff, while still being modest on weight (although not ’lightweight’ per say). It’s also high on the Jensen scale, so ’tough’. It’s harder than red oak, yet very dimensionally stable when constructed as a 3 or 5 ply. Aesthetically (totally subjective of course), I really like the look as well. Particularly, I love the way the edge grain can look like intricate inlay work if finished to showcase this, and this also is an ’easy’ cut to make. Oh, also, if purchased as a ’carbonized’ version, where it is pre-colored, this is accomplished through a baking process. This means the color is uniform through the entire piece, making sanding and cutting and finishing that much easier because consistent color will be maintained as we ’dig in’ to the material.

The vertical / edge grain ply has a unique look that grew on me, while the stranded grain appears a bit more like a traditional solid hardwood (and it’s even stiffer / more resilient than raw bamboo). As far as having a nice look but also being available in stable ply construction and available in standard 4x8’ sheets, this seems to be one of the better options. I usually work with solid hardwood, but of course it’s too dimensionally unstable for this application.

On the downside, the bamboo ply is pretty expensive... I might pay around $1k in materials for this in total. I’m good with it, though -- I want to shoot for something really top notch on this job, both in form and function. Economically I’d still be coming in at around half the cost of a new set of Nenuphars, I figure... instead, I pay through sweat, maybe some tears, but hopefully no blood :0.

Please keep us posted

Will do!  Thanks for the kind words, and all your input throughout the thread.

My progress with this will be slow -- I'm just starting the preliminary work (planning, research).  I'm in a good situation for taking my time on this one, as I'm already quite smitten with my Omegas.  Eventually, I should have a well informed comparison between the two.