B&W Nautilus 803 or B&W 702 S2?

Hmmm, seeing as how the Wilson Audio Alexx comes in at $109,000 retail, I don’t think that’s a fair comparison either.
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So, when comparing the cost of a B&W 803 D3 at $17,000 a pair. What speakers would be better AND cheaper?!?
Or even the 804 D3 coming in at $9,000.
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Ultimately, I don’t think I can come close to the performance of the B&W speakers at that cost, especially with the diamond tweeter. Now, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and there are definitely other speakers that are engaging, but they all have different characteristics. I have seen the brand Joseph Audio mentioned as a very competative speaker. They use the Seas Magnesium woofers and the Seas softdome tweeters. The Magnesium woofers have extremely high resolution and really "sing". They are definitely very engaging, but they do have a resonance peak at 5khz that can affect things and could contribute towards a slightly "metal" sound. The softdome tweeters are excellent and also "sing", but they do put a slightly tube like signature on the highs that are not their with the B&W D3. B&W D3 are slightly more laid back in the midrange, but have significantly more clarity in the highs.

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In the end, it all depends on what you want and what your preferences are.

IMO the Sonus Faber Olympica iii ($13,500/pair) and the Olympica ii ($10k/pair) are more musical or I should say more engaging with music than the B&W 803 D3 which retail for $17k/pair. My friend happens to be a dealer for both B&W & Sonus Faber and one time we had shootout between the SB Olympica iii and the B&W 803 D3 at his shop. Both speakers were paired with Classe Delta CAM-300 monoblock amps (class AB), Audio Research Reference 5 linestage preamp and a Naim ND 555 streamer/DAC + Naim 555 PS DR separate power supply unit.
So all the electronics are of high bars and we sat down for at least 2 hrs listening and comparing between the two speakers. We found that the SB Olympica iii is more engaging with music especially with piano and string instruments. But when we fed them with high resolution materials of great recordings we found the 803 D3 to be quite engaging and it’s got to the point where I can easily live with them with high resolution materials of good recordings.

@caphill - just following up.  I did get a chance at RMAF (first time) to hear a bunch of speakers.  The Sonus Faber are definitely an excellent sounding speaker (my friend has a set of bookshelves mated with all Krell Evolution generation electronics that are excellent as well).
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On the B&W D3 note, I heard the 800 D3 in three different rooms.  The main B&W room had Simaudio Moon (if I remember right) and the sound was very clean and clear but did still have a little of that Class A smoothed over sound in the mids.  The second room was even more smoothed over.  In the third room, the 800 D3 sounded so bad that if that was my only exposure to B&W, I would totally walk out of that room and forget about B&W forever.  In actuality, I have to wonder how many speakers I heard that I would have thought sounded amazing, but were compromised somehow by an overly colored tube or too-smooth Class A amp, lol.  In reality, I love my B&W D3 at home here and was surprised that my system actually beats the crap out of a LOT of the RMAF rooms.  There were probably less than 10 rooms that actually sounded great to me.  Many sounded "nice", but just didn't reach that amazing level.
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I did hear Wilson bookshelf speakers and I will admit they were pretty damn great sounding. It was tube gear, so it's difficult to know how they will respond on Class AB solid state. 
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@topedwards - hopefully you listened to a lot at RMAF.  I would caution wit the Focal speakers.  I think they would be just fine with your McIntosh, but the Focal are fast and definitely have a thin/hollow midrange and midbass.  They would likely do very well with a Pass Labs full Class A, but your Mac will have a very laid back midrange and could be a great synergy.  I think you probably want a very high resolution to mate with your McIntosh.  Focal would be great.  Others that I have heard could be B&W D3 or Audio Physic.  The Sonus Faber definitely sounded good with McIntosh, but they are not the most detailed/forward speaker.

Oh, one more recommendation (and I did this in another thread) are the new Revel Performa Be speakers.

@auxinput

True. I have heard the B&W 802 D3 at the shop driven by all McIntosh tube power amp and preamp and didn’t like the sound at all. For some reason, B&W will not pair well with some tube amps, not all. Better off with SS amps. I think the B&W D3 do pair well with SS McIntosh amps, Classe Delta series class AB & Classe Omega series class A amps, some Sim, D’Agostino, Ayre & Naim amps among others.

My B&W 800 D3 front speakers that I have in my dedicated home theater room are driven by a pair of Classe Delta CAM-600 monoblock amps (class AB) and they sounded spectacular together. My matching B&W HTML1 D3 center speaker is being driven by a single Classe Delta CAM-300 monoblock amp (class AB), and the rest of my surround speakers (matching B&W 800 D3 series custom theater in-wall speakers) are driven by two Classe Delta CA-2300 stereo amps (class AB). And finally, my 4 overhead height ceiling speakers for Atmos setup are driven by two Classe Sigma Amp2 amps (class D) since my new Lyngdorf MP-50 AV processor does not have RCA single-ended analog audio outputs only XLR. For those 4 overhead height ceiling Atmos speakers I was originally gonna get the Clase Sigma Amp5 five-channel amp but the problem was that the Sigma Amp5 has XLR inputs only for first two channels and the rest of the channels are only available in single-ended inputs. Overall, they all sound terrific together for home theater use.

However, last year I did try bringing my B&W 800 D3 along with the Classe Delta CAM-600 monoblock amps over to my dedicated two-channel listening room and hook them up with the ARC Reference 10 linestage tube preamp that I had at the time with the DCS Vivaldi full four stacks (Vivaldi master clock, Vivaldi upsampler, Vivaldi DAC, Vivaldi CD/SACD transport) served as my digital front end source components. They sounded spectacular together and those were great combo for the B&W 800 D3 IMO driven by SS amps (Classe CAM-600 monoblocks class AB) paired with the ARC Ref 10 tube linestage preamp. Then I also swapped the Classe CAM-600 monoblock amps with the D’Agostino Momentum M400 monoblock amps that I had in there at the time and the overall results was also spectacular.