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Alternatives to B&W 805 D4

Hello,

I’m planning to buy a pair of bookshelf speakers that I hope will last for the rest of my life. I’ll turn 50 next year, so it’s not too far fetched!

I’m thinking about the B&W 805 D4 because I'm familiar with this brand, but in this price range, there are certainly good alternatives. The ones I have in mind are the Totem Element Fire V2 and Focal Sopra No1.

My goal here if there is to use the collective mind to learn if there are other makes/models worth considering. Once I’ll have a shortlist, I’ll find places where I can try them to make a final choice because, in the end, we all know the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I’m using B&W V203/DS3 for decades with integrated amp Arcam Alpha 5 that I recently upgraded with second-hand McIntosh C712 + MC7100. The source is Sonos Connect.

I’m in Montreal, Québec - it could change the availability of some brands.

Thanks for your input.

Papyneau
papyneau
james633
1,025 posts
 
You will be fine. You don’t need the best speaker ever made just ones you like. They are all colored and limited in reality. 
You can learn a lot from the measurements but there is a lot of subtlety in them so truly reading and understanding them is another thing (not claiming I can). 
I would guess the Sopra 1 is an amazing stand mounted speaker based on hear the larger models and looking at the measurements. 
Here is a binary recording (use headphones) of the Sopra 1 and 805d3 in the same room same song same system. Just YouTube…. So take it with a grain of salt but still interesting.  
https://youtu.be/FxTQvqlsp54


Another long video comparison here. 
https://youtu.be/Msaq4kCYclw
ryder
1,689 posts
 
It’s okay. From the 17 suggestions, perhaps 2 or 3 are local and you can go and listen to them.

You can narrow down the choices based on your preferences. In that way, you don’t need to look at options which don’t appeal to you. I don’t know about others, I’ll only consider speakers which look good to me. I won’t bother listening to the speakers even though they may sound like a million bucks if they look ugly to me.
soix
9,456 posts
 
But I’m puzzled about how I can make a good selection. I can read reviews or graphs, but it will never be enough information to discriminate one over another.
Well, that’s why I asked before what sound characteristics and improvements you’re looking for.  Give us that info and at the very least we can help greatly narrow the field for you.  Without that critical info, you’re absolutely right — it seems like a daunting task.  Trying to help here but you need to pony up the basic info to let us do that.  C’mon man, help us help you. 

I’m pretty sure you all faced this situation at one point or another.
Uh, yeah.  And we can help but you need to provide what you’re looking for or we’re all just flying blind here.  Get where I’m coming from here?


papyneau OP
31 posts
 
@soix:
Yes, I saw the question but I'm not sure I'll be able to articulate a sensible answer :-) The more, I read the more it's clear that there is no one-speaker-that-is-the-best-at-all-styles, so I get your question! But I like, and listen, to a pretty wide range of music types. But looking more closely at my Spotify library, it's mainly female voices of many styles (Holy Cole, Adele, Coeur de Pirate, Elle King, Angèle, ..) but also some classic rock (Metallica, Led Zeppelin, ..,), signers with amazing voices (Louise Attaque, Asaf Avidan, ...), classical classic (Beethoven, Vivaldi, Chopin, ...) and... probably anything in between. 

Looking at the incredible comparaison between Focal Sopra No1 and Bowers 805D3 shared by @james633 (thank you so much for that!), I must admit that contrarily to my initial belief , I appreciate the Focal more that the B&W. I will definitely try them before my final decision. I'm pretty sure I can sacrifice a bit of the warmth and loudness of the B&W for the clarity and precision of the Focal.
This comparaison is even more instructive as my no.2. contender, the Totem Element Fire V2, has even more bass then the B&W, at least on paper (I haven't heard them yet).
Sopra No.1 :45Hz - 40kHz
805 D4: 34Hz - 35k Hz
Element Fire V2: 30Hz - 22kHz

And my understanding is human ears don't pickup anything above 20kHz, so going to 35 or 40 kHz is music for...dog! (Happy to have this assumption challenged as I am in full learning mode!)

james633
1,025 posts
 
Well I would not believe the specs. Looking at the measurements posted above you can see the Sopra 1 and 805D4 reach about the same depth.
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