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

As an ex 800N owner I have to agree about them sounding lean. I auditioned nearly a half dozen amps from MBL to Mcintosh with always the same results. In fact I purchased my 800N's from my neighbour who was bi amping them with a pair of Levinson 336's in a beautifully dampened room with wood walls and carpet. He prefered his 800 Matrix and let me have his 800N's with a warning, wished I had listened. I guess it comes down to a matter of personal taste, had no problem selling them and received over 5000 veiws on my listing. Just my 2 cents, dont mean to dump on any happy 800 owners.

To answer a few questions....the back of the cabinet is three feet from the wall. One is near a corner and one is not. The room is 26 by 28 all closed. The 9's sounded fine like this, but I do realize position is proprietary to each speaker.
Judy, if I had to base my opinion of B&W on the 800's alone I would totally agree with you ( assuming mine are not defective). I also own the CDM 9 NT, CDM 7NT, and HTM1. These are fine sounding speakers at the price point. I have to admire that you put your opinion out there knowing you were going to get spanked! At the very least I would appreciate knowing what speakers you think I should audition in the used 6k to 8k range just in case these 800's go up on the block.

Thank you for all of the responses. I should have been more clear....we are not talking a small difference in bass between the 800's and the 9's. The difference is at least 50 percent in the bass between the two in a two channel direct A/B comparison. The 9's have two 6.5" woofers, and the 800's have two 10". When you hit two 10" woofers with 300 watts, even if it is Adcom, something should happen! If the difference was more subtle, I would put more faith in the I/C, cables, amp,and positioning theories. If it is a defect,I also have a hard time believing that both speakers could have the same defect at the same time. The processor is new and I am still figuring out some of the features. I keep having this nagging feeling that a crossover is engaged, but that would not explain the difference in the two speakers when running in two channel side by side. I even tried switching sides. The results were exactly the same using the old Adcom processor. My guess is the 800's are putting out about 30 to 40 percent of the bass they should be capable of. It really is as if they are not getting the full signal. Is it reasonable to conclude that either these speakers are defective, or they just need gobs of power to produce descent bass?

Is it reasonable to conclude that either these speakers are defective, or they just need gobs of power to produce descent bass?

Well, you're feeding them with 300W capability per channel, so normally that shouldn't be a problem (unless the impedance below 80Hz or so is very high which is unlikely). UNLESS, indeed, the adcom has trouble driving those 10" woofs: i.e. the sound intensity of the top part of the spkr is much higher relative to the low part, which means that you can't "hear" the bass. A solution would be to borrow another two channel amp fm s/one and try it on the woofs. This is probably the problem.

You may, if you wish, play the spkrs connecting ONLY the woofs and listen to what's happening.

You may also be experiencing a null at some upper bass frequency due to yr room. For that, there's little to be done (other than room treatment), but experiment pulling the speakers ~1/3 into the room to gauge differences, if any. Also keep them far from each other & slowly move them closer until you hear the L&R low midrange sound coupling.
And good luck!

Tighten all the screws on your woofers. When I got my
Matrix 800's the screws were loose when I thightened them it helped very much.