Nubert NuVero 60 Speaker Review

[Beave]

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

It's a BMR driver made by Tympany. You can see that in the video linked above.

 

[thewas]

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.

It has happened several times in past models, see for example here, there was also somewhere a discussion for the Nuvero changes but I cannot find it right now.
From what I remember in the past years their acoustic senior engineer Thomas Bien tends more to a flat tweeter response around a 30° to give higher sound power there in the listening position.
This can be also seen if someone compares the measurements from the same lab of the German magazines group Audio & Stereoplay from 2015 and 2018, the newer review shows more elevated treble and comparing those to the ones of Amir I guess yours belongs to the newer models:

 

[anphex]

It has happened several times in past models, see for example here, there was also somewhere a discussion for the Nuvero changes but I cannot find it right now.
From what I remember in the past years their acoustic senior engineer Thomas Bien tends more to a flat tweeter response around a 30° to give higher sound power there in the listening position.
This can be also seen if someone compares the measurements from the same lab of the German magazines group Audio & Stereoplay from 2015 and 2018, the newer review shows more elevated treble and comparing those to the ones of Amir I guess yours belongs to the newer models:

View attachment 369233
View attachment 369236

Valid point! Still I can never really get behind the idea of designing a speaker in a way so the best listening position is off the axis. It's like designing a TV that is oversaturated and uncalibrated when you sit straight in front of it and only people standing in the edge of the room have the ideal view. It just does not makes sense vor me. At least not for hifi speakers where people spend a good buck to get good sound.

 

[Grotti]

I am concerned about the distortion of the tweeter. Given the high crossover point it should handle 96 dB with ease....Any chance, that the tweeter isn't working properly?

 

[anphex]

I am concerned about the distortion of the tweeter. Given the high crossover point it should handle 96 dB with ease....Any chance, that the tweeter isn't working properly?

Looking at measurements of other speakers the distortion seems to be in a healthy range. And I wouldn't consider a crossover of 2100 Hz not really has "high".

 

[Grotti]

OK, 2.1 kHz isn't too high...but the filter seems steep, so the tweeter should have no problem. You may notice, that even at moderate 86 dB the tweeter shoes multiple resonances respectively a grade of distortion at a lower level. I could show you examples of loudspeakers tested here, where the tweeters are more or less cruising at 86 dB, whereas this tweeter is not. Wether it is audible or not is another question though...

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

Still I can never really get behind the idea of designing a speaker in a way so the best listening position is off the axis. It's like designing a TV that is oversaturated and uncalibrated when you sit straight in front of it and only people standing in the edge of the room have the ideal view. It just does not makes sense vor me.

Wrong analogy with TV. What you hear is mix from direct (from speaker) and reflected (from walls, ceiling and floor). What you see is direct picture (from TV) only.

 

[anphex]

Wrong analogy with TV. What you hear is mix from direct (from speaker) and reflected (from walls, ceiling and floor). What you see is direct picture (from TV) only.

But even the anechoic measurements show this design without any room influence.
(This graph IS anechoic, right?

 

[staticV3]

(This graph IS anechoic, right?

Yes.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

But even the anechoic measurements show this design without any room influence.
(This graph IS anechoic, right?

Yes, that is anechoic.
And this is anechoic+reflections in the room, at the listening spot - very close to what you will hear in your room:

 

[staticV3]

And this is anechoic+reflections in the room, at the listening spot - very close to what you will hear in your room

*with the speakers pointed straight at you.

It'd be nice if Amir could adopt Erin's method of showing EIR at different angles:


Especially for speakers like this that we're designed for zero toe-in.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

Yes, that would be nice. @amirm ?
My post was about the wrong analogy: TV vs loudspeaker, i.e. direct vs direct+reflected.

 

[anphex]

*with the speakers pointed straight at you.

It'd be nice if Amir could adopt Erin's method of showing EIR at different angles:
View attachment 369243 View attachment 369242

Especially for speakers like this that we're designed for zero toe-in.

Couldn't you emulate/calculate this after a Klippel NFS measurement somehow? As in the data is already there, just needs another plot?

 

[staticV3]

Couldn't you emulate/calculate this after a Klippel NFS measurement somehow? As in the data is already there, just needs another plot?

Probably, yeah.

 

[peniku8]

Here is Amir's compression measurement, but digitized then converted to a relative graph, for those that prefer this version (I do! It gets rid of the sine illusion):

View attachment 369186

(1/24 Oct Smoothing was applied not to "game the system", but to remove quantization noise that was added when the Klippel software rasterized the data for PNG export)

If you're confused:
We take Amir's quietest sweep (96dB) as a baseline, then show the difference in response at higher levels, when we remove the step in volume.
This shows purely what happens to the frequency response, as we increase the volume in 1dB steps.

A perfect speaker with unlimited headroom would look like this:
View attachment 369188
Identical frequency response no matter how hard you push the volume.

The zoomed-in y-axis also gives us a closer look at the compression behavior.

For example, while Amir noted severe woofer distortion at 104 and 105dB, we can see that at 103dB, things already take a turn for the worse:
View attachment 369185

Where before we had a relatively smooth and predictable compression behavior at 300-400Hz, when pushed to 103dB and beyond, a new "peak" forms, indicating an additional mode of nonlinearity.


Lastly, a request for @amirm:

It would be nice if you could capture one additional sweep as a baseline, at a volume where the speaker is likely to still be within its linear operating range.
From what we know, the Nubert may already be slightly compressing at 96dB, and so plotting the higher volumes relative to this already "tainted" sweep as baseline is a bit dissatisfying

That's so helpful. It's basically impossible to see (at quick glance) what's going on with the 1dB steps on the zoomed-out scale that Amir provides.
Ideally a review would have a relative graph with a baseline of 76dB. Display the first graph that exceeds 1dB in compression at any point in the range and then go up from there in 3dB steps. That would reduce clutter while still showing regions with 'issues' with decent accuracy.
The stimulus should not be a sweep, but stepped sines with small pauses in between, so a 'prior-state' event doesn't taint the measurement (especially important for active speakers with digital limiters).
Personally I hold a grudge against linear compression and distortion stimuli as a whole, as music tapers off with ~3dB per octave in energy (broad average), similar to pink noise, which means sweeps exaggerate HF distortion&compression (100Hz is 20dB louder than 10KHz in such a test), but this is an entirely different topic of course.

 

[staticV3]

The stimulus should not be a sweep, but stepped sines with small pauses in between, so a 'prior-state' event doesn't taint the measurement (especially important for active speakers with digital limiters).
Personally I hold a grudge against linear compression and distortion stimuli as a whole, as music tapers off with ~3dB per octave in energy (broad average), similar to pink noise, which means sweeps exaggerate HF distortion&compression (100Hz is 20dB louder than 10KHz in such a test), but this is an entirely different topic of course.

I'd even go as far as double-checking synthetic compression measurements with null tests, derived from real music.

Deltawave for example can filter out steady-state frequency and phase deltae so that only nonlinear distortion remains.

Step through a range of volumes, noting down DF/PK Metric at each step, and you should get a pretty good idea how the synthetic compression data translates to real music.

Edit:
Though for this method, we'd once again need anechoic environments to get clean data.

Klippel can't compute the anechoic response in real-time (yet)

 

[RickS]

It's a usual way to spread corner diffraction over a wider spectrum to reduce their contribution to the signal.

I want to know if they are making any claim to why use the special driver mounting plates? Otherwise, just seems like more cost without any benefit.

 

[Blockader]

I want to know if they are making any claim to why the special driver mounting plates? Otherwise, just seems like more cost without any benefit.

everything around the driver is a 180 degrees waveguide. Different driver mounting plates = different diffraction profile = different pattern control/directivity.

 

[peniku8]

Yes, that is anechoic.
And this is anechoic+reflections in the room, at the listening spot - very close to what you will hear in your room:

With how different "rooms" are, no single graph can be "very close" to that. CEA-2034's "estimated in-room" is merely a guidance to what effects could manifest and if they do, it gives us a data point to interpret why.

 

[Tassin]

I want to know if they are making any claim to why the special driver mounting plates? Otherwise, just seems like more cost without any benefit.

Their website states:

The tweeter of the nuVero series is designed for the widest possible dispersion. In combination with the optimised front plate, the dispersion is even wider. Your advantage: Larger sweet spot and wider stage coverage ...