B&W Nautilus 800.....where's the bass?

Baffled: Your tale is both instructive and heartening, ignore the other stuff. In audiophilia you find that any company of a certain size or larger, and especially one that does as much original science r&d as B&W and has one leg in the mass market, makes an inviting target for a disproportionate share of bashing. Guys like to champion shoestring causes and rail against the establishment, but companies like B&W (actually, there really is no other speaker company quite like B&W) oppress nobody, as evidenced by the continual plethora of garage start-ups in the high end speaker biz. Every David needs his Goliath. Personally, I find it comforting that the largest speaker company on the planet also happens to take good sound seriously and makes a quality product. No, they're not hand-crafted and yes, they're sold at chain stores, but they're not evil, just uncommonly competent by and large. For the record, I don't own 'em, sell 'em, or even necessarily prefer 'em in lots of instances, but I do respect and appreciate them. Enjoy your system secure in the knowledge that for the most part the rude detractors are merely jealous.

Actually, Zaike, that's a very good point you're making & I agree totally.
In a similar spirit, other mass manufacturers also produce highly performant products (take B&O & Sony for one spkr model each) -- and no, they aren't hand crafted either, but they're sometimes cheaper than their garage equivalents, as they SHOULD be.
The only thing that sometimes annoys me is that manufacturers with huge resources, i.e. lower R&D & production cost, charge too high prices for certain of their products... Not being B&W's CFO, I feel justified in ranting at the asking price of their small models. Indeed, just compare the price of a 805 to the 800...
End of ranting.

Just think how good that new front-end would sound on some good speakers!

(That ought to get people going)

I just read through this thread.. Comical!

Chris

The B&W Nautilus 800 is very disappointing. That is why B&W does even want to talk about the Nautilus series. The B&W 800D is so superior over the Nautilus 800.

A few years ago I went down to a Hi-Fi Store , and they had the B&W Nautilus 800 set up. We had over $100K in electronics , cables hooked up to them and that is what I said "where the heck is the bass" ?? Very lean and bright and lacking slam in the midbass where is needed. My Sonus Faber Extrema speakers have more bass.

The B&W Nautilus 800 (800N) was not very natural sounding.
Live performances in both analog and digital were very thinned out and at times irritating.

For $16K price tage the B&W Nautilus is ridiculous. Even the candid dealer took me on the side and said B&W really &%#@! screwed up on this speaker. I earned the respect of this B&W dealer after he was very truthful with me.

I went down recently down to the same B&W dealer and now he has the 800D setup. WOW!!!! What a difference a letter can make.

In my personal opionion and many agree with me, the B&W 800 Nautilus was a short lived DOG. Even at the preowned price of $7K-8K range they are not a good choice.