Wavemaster Cube review

The Wavemaster Cube look like a typical pair of bookshelf speakers, with a somewhat utilitarian black design; some might complain they verge on the dull side, but we were fond of their understated looks. The name is also something of a misnomer, as these Bluetooth-enabled speakers are more cuboid than Cube, but they more than make up for a lack of visual flair with excellent sound quality.

Each acoustically dampened MDF cabinet holds a 25mm silk dome tweeter and a 13cm mid-range/woofer driver, with power coming from a built-in amplifier. The power/volume and source selection dials on the front of the right speaker protrude quite a long way and aren’t particularly attractive, which detracts from the otherwise clean and uncluttered design.

The speakers connect to each other with conventional speaker wire and push pin terminals, meaning you can swap out the included cable for a longer spool if it isn’t long enough for your particular setup. The bundled cable is more than long enough for a desk or bookshelf, however. You only need to connect the right speaker to the mains, rather than both, and thankfully the system will go into standby after a short period where no music is detected. Likewise, it will turn on automatically once a wired signal is received.

There’s also a pair of RCA phono connectors and a 3.5mm auxiliary input on the back of the right speaker for connecting wired devices like a PC or laptop, but the Cube’s party piece is Bluetooth. It uses the rather outdated Bluetooth 2.1 standard, rather than the newer version 4.0, and omits support for the less-lossy aptX audio codec or Apple’s AAC in favour of the basic SBC codec. This means it can only stream audio at a maximum 328 kbps bitrate at a sampling rate of 44.1kHz, so you’ll be sacrificing sound quality if your music collection includes better than MP3-quality files. There’s also no NFC quick pairing, which would have been a real bonus.

The difference in sound quality between devices connected through Bluetooth and those wired directly into the speakers thankfully wasn’t very pronounced when listening to low-bitrate MP3s or streaming audio, but there was a subtle improvement using Line In when switching to a higher quality source.

Sound quality in general felt supremely transparent, with plenty of detail in the mids and treble in particular. Certain tracks benefit from a slightly higher treble, but thankfully Wavemaster has added treble and bass adjustment dials on the back of the right speaker – it only took a little bit of adjustment to improve playback.

Disappointingly, pushing the Cube to its maximum volume resulted in a lot of bass distortion and made for uncomfortable listening. They sounded fantastic when keeping each speaker within its comfort range, which was around 90% of full volume. Above 90% and we found the bass distorted slightly, introducing distracting reverberation of the chassis. Treble also became bright. 90% volume is still enough to fill a medium to large-sized room comfortably, however.

It’s a minor complaint for what is otherwise a great sounding pair of speakers that are supremely easy to use, whether as Bluetooth wireless bookshelf speakers or an upgrade for your PC or hi-fi speakers if you have space.