Sonus Faber Electa Amator III vs. the Bowers and Wilkins 805 D4?

Make sure you listen at the right volume for your habits. Listening very loud or too softly may prejudice you one way or another. The B&W’s prefer to be listened below the tweeter axis so this can also impact what you’ve heard.

A very personal opinion is that the SF is much smoother and better balanced speaker than the B&W with a wider sweet spot. If that’s what you heard in the store you are not wrong.

If you use either with a sub consider plugging the ports as you’ll get lower distortion and sub matching.

Those are very different sounding speakers so I’m a bit surprised you didn’t clearly prefer one sonically over the other even in different systems.  I’ll just say I got to compare the original Joseph Audio Pulsars to the 805 D3s and to my ears the Pulsars excelled in virtually every parameter so maybe put those on your list as well.  They also probably split the difference sonically between the two you’re currently exploring.  FWIW, and best of luck.

@soix 

...So does S. Faber even make a stand-mount with their older, "traditional" presentation???

One review I recently came across of the E. Amator asserted it had a "smiley face" EQ profile. I subsequently watched a review by that Canadian dealer Adrian who compared the E. Amator to the D. Hertz Eva. According to his characterizations, I got the impression it was the latter that would seem to offer what I expected from the E. Amator.

...So does S. Faber even make a stand-mount with their older, "traditional" presentation???

@stuartk Unfortunately I have no idea.  I think @ghdprentice might be able to give you some helpful insights on that if he wants to chime in here.