B&W 803d, Martin Logan Spire, Klipsch P-37F?

and on male vocals which may seem too recessed compared to the bass and treble (whilst female vocalists may jump out at you)

These were my precise observations with all of my B&W speakers (803D, 804S and N804).

That concerns me as I do not feel like male vocals are recessed on my current RF-7s

The RF-7 is crossed over at 2200 Hz. So it is much like many two ways - except the horn will probably play way louder and cleanly. The 10 inch woofers will still beam however the tractix horn will cause the tweeter to beam also. I suspect Klipsch will have matched the two at 2200 Hz and hence you will have a very smooth off axis response throughout the midrange (they claim "smooth response and consistent coverage" but I have not seen a plot...so this is speculation).

Here is a table of woofer size and beaming
Woofer Beaming begins to occur at (Conservative limit)
18" 576 Hz
15" 720 Hz
12" 863 Hz
10" 1079 Hz
8" 1.23 KHz
6" 1.73 KHz
5" 2.16 KHz
4" 2.58 KHz
3" 3.45 KHz
2" 5.18 KHz
1" 10.36 KHz

In practice, you will begin to notice a significant difference in off axis versus on axis sound as you step to the side of any speaker which flouts these upper limits by more than 50%.

You may have noticed that large single driver speakers often have a "whizzer cone" (think Fostex): this is to try to overcome the beaming problems of a large driver. Other designs may include an acoustically reflective "phase plug" which helps reduce the detrimental effect of beaming (think Seas Excel woofers). Another trick is to let the cone itself flex...remember all those concentric rings on TAD woofers...at higher frequencies the cone flexes and the inside moves more than the outer edge (reducing beaming)

It begs the question: Why in the world would designers ever use woofers at frequencies where they beam? Well the challenge is that drivers need to move a hell of a lot of air as you go to lower frequencies. For example, tweeters do NOT like to be driven at lower frequencies (they just don't work well - either they distort at low SPL's or users fry them too easily). A horn is one option to get a tweeter (a small compression driver actually) to play lower but then it beams by its very nature - so not much of a cure. Another option is to use more drivers (three way) or build robust drivers (big motors and expensive) that are small but still capable of playing low frequencies at high SPL's.

Hope this helps...

So would everyone agree that 803d would have superior midrange to the RF-7? I don't like the ideo of a recessed midrange.

Macallan7 - Well it kind of depends on what you consider superior. The descriptions above are pretty accurate as to what B&W speakers sound like. I maintain that your choice of music has a lot to do with what sound you will like. I know there is the school of thought that a good speaker will sound good with all music - I simply disagree with that school of thought.

I listen to mostly classical with some jazz and a smattering of rock. Classical typically has little energy above 4k - the fundamentals are almost all below 4k and the harmonics above 4k add some body but are pretty attenuated. So you are really not getting much out of the tweeter on a B&W 3 way speaker anyway. Jazz - lot of snares etc gets you in the audible tweeter range - and I find the B&W's fine for that.

Haven't really analyzed why - but B&W's are not the speaker of choice in my opinion for rock or most vocals. (The large classic Spendors were the best speaker I have heard for vocals) This is the reason that for my tastes I heard no advantage from the B&W models with the diamond tweeters. The 802 has a larger set of woofers which doesn't sound bad but I found the 803D woofer setup to be a step down from the 803S. But, I am not all that thrilled with bass heavy sound.

One other point - getting the B&W's to sound to one's liking takes a little work with room acoustics and listening position, but once you have it set it's great. Now, I listen to music alone and with an analytical ear - which makes acoustics and positioning not a problem. If I listened primarily to rock and roll with groups of people (as in my youth) I would not choose B&W speakers. For my tastes in music, I did not hear anything else that I preferred.