Nubert NuVero 60 Speaker Review

[thewas]

Was there any information on the purchase/production date as there were done some slight changes in the crossover tuning in the last years?

The measurements while not bad confirm my fear of the 25 mm tweeter without a waveguide not being a perfect match to the wide dispersion small BMR mid, a 19 mm one or one with a shallow waveguide or narrow ribbon like used at the Philarmonic BMR Monitor would have been a preferable choice for me.

 

[amirm]

Why going for EQ without trying the effect of the switches first? If Klippel is too time consuming, simple Rew measurement would be fine.

I showed the differences those switches make:

You can do a bit better but still won't finish with a flat on-axis response. I also commented on the effect of treble switch in my listening tests.

There is just no way a few switches can compete with fine control you have with EQ.

 

[amirm]

Was there any information on the purchase/production date as there were done some slight changes in the crossover tuning in the last years?

No. Once the owner wakes up and sees this, maybe he can comment.

 

[capslock]

Teardown video:

You can have youtube generate translated subtitles in the settings.

XO schematic and driver models at 19:36. Sub is a Peerless HDS160, midrange a TEBM46, tweeter a Scan D2608. I am surprised it distorts this much.

 

[Beave]

ScanSpeak D2608 tweeter

Tymphany BMR driver

Tymphany/Peerless HDS160F38PG woofer

 

[3125b]

Now if Nubert ever discovered this new waveguide technology all the kids are using, they‘d be unstoppable.

The TOTL model of this series (https://www.nubert.de/nuvero-170/a042690) looks quite funny. More drivers more better.

 

[anphex]

Thank you so much Amir!

I sent this in with the financial support of a kind german hifi community (lautsprecherforum.eu).
It's a small fortune to ship this ~20Kg speaker around the world.
Many Nubert speaker fans were interested in this "undressing" of this speaker to have a core reference measurement on how to regard Nubert speakers in the future.

As it turns out, this measurement is very close to what most people expected and pretty alright. In my case they are used as surround speakers and I think due to the high frequency dispersion it's an pretty ideal use case.

As for main speakers I have their big brothers (or rather fathers?) the NuVero 170 who also come with the same high frequency boost that is pretty controversial but can be EQ'd away. The sound signature is the same but they have a far deeper bass extension and very low distortion levels.

What surprised me is the rather high tweeter distortion as Nuberts devs usually claimed that the "ScanSpeak 2608has an insanely good distortion behaviour won in several listening tests". Now I wonder if this sound is kind of a tube simulation and that's why it won?

In the end I am going to have a long deliberation whether I swap those to Genelecs in the long term or I'll stick to them.


Again, thank you Amir. This helped me a lot!

 

[anphex]

No. Once the owner wakes up and sees this, maybe he can comment.

Good morning

Dunno, I bought these speakers around 2018 and it is not purely out of the question that there may be slight undocumented changes. But to say it clearly, I never heard of Nubert changing stuff in an ongoing product line.

 

[capslock]

What do you mean by tube simulation? Intentionally increased HD2? The ring radiator does this, as do to a lesser degree all wide surround tweeters.

 

[DSJR]

No presence at all in the UK and I only came by the brand reading reviews via a translator on the German Lowbeats site. Some of their simpler mpodels look interesting too I think.

 

[anphex]

What do you mean by tube simulation? Intentionally increased HD2? The ring radiator does this, as do to a lesser degree all wide surround tweeters.

As in the tweeter was selected for this speaker line by "listening trial and error", and on first listen people in General seem to prefer "warm" and or "louder" sound that usually is similar to a tube amp. Maybe Nubert also fell into this trap, but I kind of doubt it.

I don't know if that was a tradeoff or intentional design choice, but the question is also whether this 1 % Distortion is noticable at 96 dB anyway. Still it's in the average range of passive speakers, maybe I have just read too many Genelec measurements lately which completely biased me in distortion performance .

 

[capslock]

No presence at all in the UK and I only came by the brand reading reviews via a translator on the German Lowbeats site. Some of their simpler mpodels look interesting too I think.

Try the amazon.de site (you can log in with your co.uk account) to see if they ship to the UK. I do it the other way around from time to time, and is glitch free and affordable, i.e. shipping fees are generally below € 10, and UK VAT is correctly deducted and EU VAT added without extra fees. Even returns are easy, and I got a refund for the return shipping the one time I needed to do this.

This is in stark contrast to the ebay uk "global shipping programme" which is a major rip-off, meaning that I pay a bloated shipping and handling fee plus import charges with a brokerage fee. If I am buying from a dealer, the way this is set up, there is no way for the dealer to discount UK VAT, so I end up paying UK VAT (not sure if there is a difference only VAT for used goods in the UK) plus full EU VAT (for used goods, only the difference between the purchase and the selling price of the dealer should be taxed) plus a handling fee. I was even in the situation that I bought from a private seller who had accidentially enrolled in the global shipping thing so there was no way for him to send directly to me even when he was willing to, so I ended up paying GPB 30 instead of 10 for shipping and handling of a soundcard and VAT + brokerage where none was due. Rant over.

 

[ralph]

Great to have a review of a Nubert speaker here. Decent performance but unless some of its features are important to you (switches, deep bass) looks like there are better options out there for this price. I've got a Nubert subwoofer and am happy with it.

Thanks @amirm for reviewing and to @anphex for sending it over!

 

[capslock]

As in the tweeter was selected for this speaker line by "listening trial and error", and on first listen people in General seem to prefer "warm" and or "louder" sound that usually is similar to a tube amp. Maybe Nubert also fell into this trap, but I kind of doubt it.

I don't know if that was a tradeoff or intentional design choice, but the question is also whether this 1 % Distortion is noticable at 96 dB anyway. Still it's in the average range of passive speakers, maybe I have just read too many Genelec measurements lately which completely biased me in distortion performance .

Amir's Klippel graphs only show THD so we don't know if it is mainly HD2. Given the strongly frequency dependent distortion from 2 kHz up, I don't think this is surround flexing HD2 which tends to be smoother over frequency.

 

[Bob101]

The lesson of all these reviews is that the bookshelf that can be cranked up without distorting is truly rare.

This is also my conclusion. If you trade bass extension for sensitivity and/or cabinet volume the most obvious trade-off will be higher distortion and compression beginning at lower SPL in the low frequencies. It's basically just physics. To get high volume low frequencies you need to move a lot of air, no way around that. A small woofer in a small cabinet can allow the driver only so much...

 

[anphex]

If I read right the BMR comes with a sensivity of 82dB, so it's this BMR that's pulling the sensivity down and the rest of the design makes use of it with deep bass extension? Just a hunch.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Nubert is very well known in Germany. Thanks to @amirm, @anphex and the members of the german forum who helped funding the 300 EUR for shipping.

To those who heard Nubert for the first time, there are a few more reviews with full sets of measurements of their active "pro" series (in german):

NuPro A-500: https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/midfield-monitor-nubert-nupro-a-500-im-test/

NuPro A-600: https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/studiomonitor-nubert-nupro-a-600-im-test/

NuPro X-4000: https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/nubert-studiomonitore-nupro-x-4000-im-test/

Not bad and some of them pretty unique, but imho not at the same level as Genelec or Neumann. Good feature set though. They have again released a new line of speakers, but i have not seen measurements.

 

[amirm]

Amir's Klippel graphs only show THD so we don't know if it is mainly HD2.

You do know:

Up to 5th harmonic is plotted.

 

[enio nery]

That Midrange driver seems to be the same Tectonic Elements BMR driver used in Philharmonic BMR Monitors.

 

[capslock]

You do know:

Up to 5th harmonic is plotted.

Right you are, my bad! The colors are a little hard to discern. So is it safe to assume that there are only THD and HD2 intermingled? In that case, it should be fairly benign. I am still amazed at the modulation as a function of frequency.