B&W 802 N vs. D

Ok guys...I've sold B&W for more than a decade, the N's and the D's, and everything in between. Yes, the biggest difference IS the tweeter. And yes the D tweeter is night and day over the N version; the resonance is up near 80kHz as opposed to 30. The N tweeter sounds bright and edgy and has a distinct metallic ring to it, the D is much faster, far more neutral, and doesn't have any of that typical metal dome ring. The diamond tweeter is VERY fragile though, if you touch it even slightly it will crack and disintegrate, and it's over a grand to replace. As far as the bass and mids, the mids are okay...just okay...on both models, but whoever said the bass is tubby is right. The woofers on both these models IMO are crap. We had a brand new pair of 802Ds we put on the floor when they first came out, and within a half hour we blew 3 of 4 woofers...separated voice coils. They can't take any serious juice, they look like they're made of cardboard, and they sound like it too. I had 803Ds at home for a couple of years, only cause I bought them dirt cheap through B&W's salesperson program, and made 5 grand on them when I sold them. My wife at least put up with the look of the 803s, but if I had brought the "they look like robots" 802s home a divorce would have been imminent. Bottom line, I wouldn't touch B&Ws with a 10 foot pole again, unless I could buy them at 20 cents on the dollar, and that would be just to flip them for a good profit. Thanks for coming out.

Crispy, this thread ended almost 4 years ago, but for what it is worth I own a pair of B&W 802D's and agree with most of your assessment except the comment about the woofers. Yes they have some ripeness in the upper bass range but placement and a decent sized room corrects most of the tubbiness. Yes, I agree too that there is better bass to be had but at least to my ears still acceptable. A little puzzled about the woofers being destroyed by large amounts of power. I've used a Mac 402 power amp and really cranked on it with no damage or distortion of any kind. This amp delivers some serious and clean power. You having been a dealer should have known how to properly power such a fine speaker. Unless B&W made some improvements to the woofers, your damaging them puzzles me.

Limitation are there crossovers. I have owned for over 8 years the 802n and 800S. I thought about the 800D. But wenn you want to grow in the level to the absolute sound. B&W misses the deep and wide stage you need to go further. So that is way I stopped with B&W. This was a very good discision I made. And yess I am at a much higher level now.

I can comment on the 805D vs 805N & 802N - all three of which I have owned. I prefer the N tweeter and overall presentation. For whatever reason, the 805D never sounded good to me. I bought them new, played them for 4 months until I had about 350 hrs and still didn't "get" them. Switching back to my beloved 805N and now 802N, I am in heaven.

Sorry for all the duplicates, I'm just getting to know how this all works. And I was a bit harsh. From what I remember, we had a Levinson 433 on the front/center (theater system, obviously) and 2 432s driving the sides and rears. Not that I liked those amps (at all), but they did have some giddyup. One of the guys there has a particularly heavy hand on the volume control, and although I didn't witness it happen, I did see the results. The voice coils were almost completely torn off the cones, hanging by pieces of pulp. I was suprised, for sure, and he was, needless to say, "reprimanded". It was some pretty dynamic stuff he was playing, and just hearing it from afar it was pretty obvious the woofers weren't having a good time. It did surprise me though, that they suffered as bad as they did; and they did seem somewhat underbuilt considering the level of the speaker. Anyway, we did monitor his listening habits after that, and it didn't happen again. As with anything, if you try to destroy it, you'll probably succeed.