How long does it take to gauge a loudspeaker’s potential? Hours, days, weeks? Twenty seconds, I say. At any rate, that’s all it took during a demonstration at HIGH END 2025 to convince us that we definitely wanted the little nuVero nova 9 in our listening room.
Don’t get me wrong: the larger nuVero nova 14 and 18 models (the 12 wasn’t a thing yet at the time) also made an excellent impression at our exclusive “trade show/press meeting.” Given their floorstanding stature, however, we fully expected them to deliver in the Nubert showroom. But with a speaker you could comfortably carry across half the town, things look different. The Nubert nuVero nova 9 had the element of surprise on its side – and boy, did it make good use of it: it reeled us in with its taut timing, garnishing its excellent soundstage with punch and pressure that even the neighbors can enjoy – both in the trade show demo room and in the nearly 50-square-meter FIDELITY listening room. And best of all: we’re talking about a full-fledged, high-fidelity powerhouse that works in practically any habitat and, including matching feet, can be had for around 2,700 euros.
Fast-forward to September. Nubert has received the first shipment of its brand-new speaker family and, after thoroughly putting it through its paces in the company’s own labs, personally drops off the well broken-in test samples at our premises. You probably have a somewhat romanticized idea of our test routines and meetings with developers: listening rooms full of speakers, electronics, and exquisite recordings, dimmed lighting, focused listening, and hi-fi-savvy small talk. The truth is that I fairly easily managed to persuade the developer of these little jack-in-the-boxes, Thomas Bien, to join me for a slice of poppy-seed cake at a nearby café, where we took several café lattes’ worth of time to talk about technology, concept, and everything surrounding the thoroughly revamped nuVero series.
The first thing I wanted to know was why the tried-and-true flagship series from the Swabians was being replaced in the first place. Natural evolution, came the predictable answer from my conversation partner. Over the nuVero’s 10-year lifespan, insights and incremental improvements had accumulated to the point where a new generation seemed justified. Above all, they’ve learned a great deal about drivers. In addition, Thomas Bien always felt there was more to be teased out of “sound dispersion”: refining the interaction between tweeter and midrange, and eliminating the last traces of edge diffraction (reflections and sound breakup at the cabinet edges), were explicit development goals of his “novas.”
To achieve this, he bundled the tweeter and midrange into a shared metal insert that not only serves a living-room-friendly look, but also decouples the drivers from the cabinet (and thus from the bass) via felt-damped mounting. The midrange driver was made smaller so it could move closer to the tweeter. Controlled by subtle waveguides in the milled aluminum carrier, the two drivers act basically like a point-source. Incidentally, these drivers are newly developed. While the tweeter’s metal dome was driven to unprecedented freedom from resonance by doubling the motor system and making various optimizations, the inwardly curved conical midrange driver (previously a flat piston driver) features the feather-light, four-layer carbon diaphragm we already know in a very similar form from the active nuZeos.
The inevitably required adaptation of the cabinet shape was hard fought – finding a balance between acoustic constraints and living-space-friendly aesthetics is why Nubert works with experienced product designers who occasionally rein Thomas Bien in. Quite rightly so, in my view, because the nuVero nova 9 simply looks stunning and still meets all specifications in the end: the formerly clearly offset baffle has been integrated into the speaker. Its front, still projecting beyond the cabinet, transitions in a wide arc into the volume of the bass-reflex enclosure. The shaping of the surprisingly robust, internally braced cabinet is interrupted only by the massive, rock-solidly screwed-on base plates.
For the character and sonic properties of their nuVeros, the tinkerers from Schwäbisch Gmünd devised a concept they summarize as “Balanced Field,” based on a combination of “diffuse-field equalization” and “Ultra Directivity.” I suspect that these terms put just as many question marks in your head as they did into mine – so let’s tackle them one by one …
“Diffuse field” simply means the listening room – or rather, the listening environment. Developers like Thomas Bien can only predict and fine-tune the behavior of their speakers up to the diaphragm surface. Just a few centimeters away from the speakers, room reflections, modes, damping, and other imponderables come into play, which measurement technology lumps together as a diffuse jumble of variables. With their equalization, the Swabians attempt to cushion the effects of average listening rooms and typical speaker placement. Changes in our living environments also play a role here. Where “plush” rooms with carpet and baroque wall units were once the gold standard in Germany, an international style has since taken hold: tile or hardwood floors, sparse furnishings, and plastered walls instead of woodchip wallpaper. Huge TVs and glass-framed posters now moonlight as reflectors. Instead of a charming loudness curve that caters to thick carpets and sofas, Nubert opts for a kind of “linearization with options.”
The most important of these options is “Ultra Directivity,” which we stumble over as soon as we set up the speakers. Being the inveterate high-enders that we are, the first thing we did after the straightforward assembly on their Panzerholz stands was pointing the nuVero nova 9s directly at the listening position. The result was immediately musical, but tonally surprisingly fresh, crisp, and biting. Thomas Bien corrected the mistake by turning the speakers straight into the room. “Most customers want to set up their speakers symmetrically anyway – looks neater that way” he explained. All novas are tuned to sound most balanced in this position – and gain a small yet noticeable improvement in dimensionality. The angle to the listening position should be between 30 and 45 degrees; then, “number nine” will present you with a ruler-flat frequency response from 35 hertz to 10 kilohertz.
This is followed by a gentle emphasis of the upper treble by a moderate 2 decibels, giving triangles and hi-hats the necessary shimmer, before the tweeters gently roll off from 15 kilohertz upward. The nuVeros cross the 20-kilohertz mark at just under −6 decibels. Reduce the angle – i.e., toe the speaker in moderately toward the listening position – and the highs suddenly become more pronounced and extend beyond 22 kilohertz.
The real trick of this frequency- and decibel-potpourri lies in the fact that bass and mids up to around 5 kilohertz remain unaffected. Simply by adjusting toe-in, the compact speaker covers an astonishingly broad (treble) tonal range without altering the foundation or vocal range. Resolution and detail can be fine-tuned continuously with great sensitivity. Pointing straight into the room struck us as the most harmonious, balanced, and above all most natural tuning. Suzanne Vega’s monophonic vocal in “Tom’s Diner” appeared life-size, sculptural, and seemingly carved in stone between the speakers at a listening distance of about three meters.
In addition to placement, the nova 9 offers two further options. A jumper on the terminal allows bass attenuation for placement close to a wall. In addition, the diffuse-field equalization can be bypassed on the crossover. This removes the tweeters’ emphasis between 10 and 20 kilohertz, opening up another layer of possibilities depending on the room.
When I asked which amplifier power levels the nova feels most comfortable with, Thomas Bien reacted surprisingly tensely. Nubert has been under constant fire here, he explained. Since the 1990s, the prejudice has persisted that the Swabians’ speakers aren’t sensitive enough and demand true brutes for amplification. But that’s simply due to the lack of standardization – many manufacturers’ specs are not directly comparable. As a rule, developers measure their speakers at an optimal 2 volts, corresponding to 4 ohms. Until recently, Nubert always specified 2.83 V (8 ohms) and therefore ended up with a lower efficiency figure. At around 85 decibels (@2.83 V), the speaker gets along with a wide range of amplifiers, which I can confirm from a brief detour to the Mavis M90 (50 W@4 Ω) and Line Magnetic LM 88AI (30 W@4 Ω): both amps played the nova 9 with verve and lively musicality. Over the course of our test, the standmount model also encountered power amps like the Burmester 216, which brought the speakers’ highly precise transient reproduction to the fore. The nova conjures attacks into the listening room so quickly and precisely that I’m almost tempted to try it as a studio monitor. Any hardness that might be presumed to accompany this is cushioned by wonderful tonality and the speaker’s “unbelievably good sound,” which several colleagues pointed out. Even rock-hard impulses take on a velvety note here.
We’re well aware that evaluating Nubert speakers is always accompanied by an emotional component. Manufacturing in China and a web-based direct sales model have long been held against the Swabians. Yet both have long since become the norm and are practiced by many (even high-end) brands. And so we can wave our arms in complete relaxation and crown the immensely musical, atmospheric nuVero nova 9 as one of our highlights of the year so far – and especially with regard to its “Best Buy” qualities, we see nothing that could challenge its rank.
Accompanying Equipment
CD players: Ayon CD-3sx, Audio Note CD 3.1x | Network players/streamers: Lumin P1, T+A PSD 3100 HV | Preamplifier: Soulnote P-3 | Integrated amplifiers: Line Magnetic LM-88IA, Mavis M90 | Power amplifiers: Burmester 216, Soulnote M-3x | Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Sasha DAW, Audio Physic Spark | Racks: Solidsteel, Finite Elemente, Beaudioful | Cables: AudioQuest, HMS, in-akustik, Vovox, Nubert private brand
Loudspeaker Nubert nuVero nova 9
Concept: 3-way compact loudspeaker in bass-reflex enclosure | Drivers: Bass (15 cm) and midrange (8 cm) with four-layer carbon diaphragms; tweeter with 2.5-cm metal dome | Frequency response (−3 dB): 35 Hz to 30 kHz (depending on placement and settings) | Sensitivity (2.83 V@1 m): 84.5 dB | Continuous power handling: 180 W | Peak power handling: 250 W | Speaker terminal: Bi-amping, rhodium-plated | Special features: Ultra Directivity characteristic, bass/Ultra Directivity adjustable via jumper, (optional) matching stands with cable routing, magnetically shielded | Accessories: speaker cable (2 × 2 m), microfiber cloth, assembly gloves, quick-start guide | Finishes: black/white piano lacquer | Weight: 21/28 kg (without/with stand) | Dimensions (W/H/D): 24/54/36 cm without stand, 32/101/45 cm with stand | Warranty: 2 years | Price per pair: around €2,190, stands around €500
Nubert electronic
Nubertstraße 1
73529 Schwäbisch Gmünd
Phone +49 7171 87120
info@nubert.de