Each F10 Neo measures 26cm across by 10.7cm deep and weights a healthy 6kg. Its aluminium basket incorporates several CNC-milled parts bolted together, its motor is based on 81 neodymium slugs of 1.5kg in total. These sluggers deliver 2.4 Tesla of uniform magnetic field around the 9mm tall gap. Then there's a faraday copper ring and Cube Audio's signature CNC-milled low-loss ultralinear phenolic spider designed to absorb as little acoustic energy as possible to differ radically from the usual pleated cloth suspensions soaked in resin. The membrane made of impregnated paper plus foam surround isn't that unusual but off-script again go three whizzers which gave this team their biggest R&D headache.

In pursuit of very linear wide bandwidth beyond their excisting F8 driver, Grzegorz and Marek knew that a single whizzer would limit HF reach of a transducer designed to hit 30Hz down south. A small cone just around the phase plug proved to be the remedy beyond the standard whizzer. A third cancels out midrange shoutiness. However, each of these cones not only fixes something. It interacts with the others to upset the overall response. Team Cube voted against notch filters. That only left the mechanical route to properly integrate all three open cones with the main membrane. Three different geometries, sizes, shapes, coatings etc. had to be adjusted to enter a realm of possible iterations which only trial 'n' error could sort out one small adjustment, measurement and fix at a time. It's easy to imagine just how deep of a time hole this task dug. Now it's time to check out whether it was worth it.

To review Nenuphar, a fidata HFAS-S10U handled storage and transport duties, then LampizatOr's Pacific DAC took over to pass the signal to an amp of choice, then to the speakers via Boenicke S3 cables. All key components connected via LessLoss C-MARC power cords to a GigaWatt PC-3 SE EVO+ power conditioner which saw the main wall outlet via matching LC-3 EVO cable. Amber-modded Excellence interconnects by Audiomica Laboratory linked my DAC to the downstream kit.

It's no news that purist widebanders enjoy valves. The latter's absence at my work place would have crossed me off the list of individuals capable of handling this assignment. But Srajan's prior take on Nenuphar mapped a short but specific list of demands that I could work with. Instead of miraculously synergistic plots of an unfathomable nature, his educated assumptions simply involve amps of high output impedance for low damping factor. Zero feedback might be an additional plus. His investigations led to his FirstWatt SIT-1 as top pick for Nenuphar, the same stable's SIT-3, F5 and F7 as next in line. He found a Pass Labs XA-30.8, Kinki Studio EX-M1 and LinnenberG Liszt monos to be least copasetic. His hardware left respective DF values of 2, 30, 80, 100, 150, 2'000 and 500. Armed with these suggestions I didn't have to reinvent the wheel. My setup's high compliance with today's loaners was set in stone long before their arrival.