Amp for Nautilus 805 - Krell KAV or Classe cap 101

The Krell 300i sounds bright and hard with the N805 while the newer 300il sounds bland and grey, neither of which are suitable. The Classe CAP-151 should be a good match but I was once told by a Classe sales rep to not bother with the 101 becasue of it's low current power delivery. It is also worth looking at the Sim Audio i-3 and i-5 which work very well with B&W speakers.

B&W doesn't design their speakers with ONE manufactures amp. They use (or have used) Krell, Chord, Mark Levinson, Classe, etc. when designing speakers. One point of intrest is that they stopped using active preamps because they found them to be too colored. They were using a Mark Levinson 32 then dropped that for a passive (not sure on manufacturer) and then on to a custom built stepped resistor attenuator. On their relationships with other manufacturers I know that they import Rotel to the US market and Classe to European market. They stopped using Krell at shows not because they make bad amps but because they started making speakers which would infringe on B&Ws market. The same with Levinson when Revel came out, you notice Classe doesn't make speakers (yet).