B&W 802D vs Wilson WATT Puppy

An additional thing to consider- B&Ws are not tube friendly- the 802 in particular will not reproduce bass properly with a tube amp due to the impedance relationship between the amp and speaker in the woofer region.

Wilson, OTOH, have no problem with using either tubes or transistors as far as interface is concerned, although :) they will show you how much better most tube amps are...

The WP7 has a 2KHz trap to deal with a resonance, resulting in an impedance dip at that frequency. As you might imagine, transistor amps tend to heat that trap in the crossover rather nicely, where in a tube amp the filter does its job rather well. Tubes have always driven the speaker fairly easily. Were that 2 ohms covering a spectrum rather then being a tight band reject filter, the speaker would be a lot harder to drive; the reality is it is easy to drive.

As far as which has the better midrange I am not commenting on that, merely that the impedance of the 802D points to compromising the bass performance of tube gear used on the speaker.

I say this a lot: if you are going to invest in tube amplification, your investment dollar is usually best served by a speaker that is 8 ohms or more (particularly in the bass region) all other things being equal. Tube amplifiers for the most part prefer higher impedances, and given what they are capable of, why not show them in their best light?

The 802D employs a pair of 8 ohm woofers in parallel for an impedance of 4 ohms (roughly) in the range of the woofer (bass) region. The rest of the speaker is nominally 8 ohms. While you might think that a tube amplifier playing on this speaker is making good bass, it is a fact that most tube amplifiers would do a better job if the woofers were somehow 8 ohms with all other things being equal.

But here we are in the real world. In order for the 802D to make flat frequency response according to design, it must be driven by an amplifier capable of constant voltage response regardless of load; this means a transistor amp, as this characteristic is not associated with tube amps! IOW a tube amp will have shelved bass response (NOTE: *not* rolled off) as its output will be about 3 db less than anticipated by the designer in the bass region.

Some people hearing tube amps running this way will describe them as doing 'a fine job' but the fact of the matter is they can do better- they just need a proper load. My earlier point is that the Wilson provides a very friendly load for tube amps relatively speaking.