Auditioned Wilson Sabrina X vs B&W 803D4 and Shocked

I am lucky to live in a city with several brick and mortar hifi stores so am able to audition speakers in person. When I was shopping for new speakers a few years ago, I found that the disconnect between what many reviewers liked and what I thought sounded musical was considerable. I had a list of what I wanted to hear in hand up to, a certain price level ($!0,000)

I found many speakers played well above their price level and many below. I suggest you keep an open mind and audition all you can .

Feel free to disagree, but you should be able to get good bass with a budget of $25,000 to spend on your primary speakers unless you have a huge room and/or you are looking for big bass effects for a home theatre. I have owned many speakers with multiple 5-7 inch drivers in a tower configuration as has been so popular over the last several decades. They do a good job of getting bass out of a small footprint, they integrate well into a room and usually have good WAF but they won’t give you the same experience as speakers with a bigger diameter woofers

Trust your ears!  Wilson makes great speakers and I don't many of their models to other brands (I do think the new Watt Puppys are incredible but they are also almost $40k).

The amplification does have an impact on the sound - if you don't own Mc I wouldn't use Mc amplification as a proxy.  I've owned Mcs and they were very enjoyable to me - there is a house sound and I think that house sound matches B&W very well.  

I agree that the amps probably helped, however, I listened to a pair of B&W bookshelf's this weekend and was impressed.  Still voiced a bit higher than I prefer, but nothing annoying or wrong.  Clear with an engaging mid-range.  

If you want British done well, you could do worse than hop across the county border from Sussex to Kent, to the old Kent Engineering and Foundry where KEF speakers are designed.  If you are technical, read the 40-page White Paper on the Reference Series.  This is science in practice.

B&W are great at finishing cabinets, but personally I have never heard B&W speakers I really like, though I have yet to hear the Nautilus!

I got to compare the B&W 805 D3 to the original Joseph Audio Pulsars, and to my ears the Pulsars were superior across the board.  Better imaging and more 3D soundstage, tonality, bass, treble, and overall just more musical without sacrificing air/detail along with a better disappearing act.  The 805s just sounded less accomplished and clinical by comparison — but again that’s my ears.  All this to say if you can hear the JA Perspective 2s somewhere it’d be well worth your while.  FWIW, and best of luck.