Nenuphar Mini houses a single 8" driver rear-loaded by quarter-wave transmission line aka TQWT. Its asking price buys a box and one driver directly wired to the terminals. That's it. This minimalist package represents a purist topology that works without woofers, tweeters or filters. Each measures 25x40x100cm WxHxD and weighs 30kg so is noticeably lighter and more compact than Nenuphar. Input impedance is 10Ω, volume 100 liters, bandwidth 36Hz-18kHz and efficiency 91dB. So Mini is easier to drive but doesn't reach as low. It's not crazy high on sensitivity like competing widebanders either but that's by design. Grzegorz and Marek prioritize linearity and bandwidth over efficiency and already their first Magus proved how successful their different approach is.

Although Mini's cabinets aren't small, I found them quite sleek and certainly less clunky than Nenuphar's which in my rather small room looked quite intimidating. On the back just above floor level sits a nice plate with single WBT NextGen terminals. Two short rubber bumpers in the back and spikes in the front gently lean back each open-bottomed box. The underbelly is the mouth of the internal line and exit for the driver's rear emissions. Mini can be ordered in any gloss or matte lacquer or instead wrap in exotic veneers. My loaner dressed in Tineo aka Indian apple wood which grew on me over time. Your tastes could diverge, hence the options.

Let's talk money for a moment. Individuals unfamiliar with single-driver speakers could find today's +€10K proposition insane. Elsewhere the same price gets us more cones, sleeker heavier enclosures and fancier finishes. Today's suggestion simply renders anything more redundant and excessive. In that sense it's about elegance from simplicity; and a performance promise beyond other types. But here 'simple' means the exact opposite of 'easy'. A widebander fit for modern expectations demands extensive R&D time and money. Only very few manufacturers pursue this steeply uphill route. It's only expected then that their blood, sweat and tears wouldn't come cheap.

Mini's driver goes by F8 Neo for eight inches in diameter and neodymium not ferrite magnetics. DIYers can acquire a pair for €5'490 to design/build their own boxes and possibly save a pretty penny. I can't say whether such results could surpass Cube's turnkey solution. Moving on, the creation of a full-range driver requires a delicate balancing act. Such transducers usually live inside oddly shaped out-sized boxes to develop proper bass. F8 Neo reaches lower than normal and requires less enclosure volume to do so. This 22x10cm driver weighs 5kg and its aluminium basket bolts together CNC-milled components. The motor's 81 neodymium slugs provide 2.4 Tesla of uniformly applied force along a 9mm tall gap. There's also a Faraday copper ring and Cube Audio's signature low-loss ultra-linear phenolic spider which absorbs as little acoustic energy as possible. It's radically different from the usual pleated and resin-impregnated inner cloth suspensions.

The doused paper membrane and foam surround aren't unusual but the twin whizzers gave Grzegorz and Marek big R&D headaches. Their interactions created wiggles in the frequency response. Without electrical notch filters, mechanical integration was the only allowable correction. Different whizzer geometries, sizes, shapes and coatings introduced endless iterations. Those were laboriously executed in tiny adjustments and with measurements for corroboration. It's easy to imagine how huge of a time sink this became. Clients will naturally see this prior marathon reflected on the final tally.