B&W 804's Vs. Vienna Acoustic Beethoven

Cdc, your original tongue-in-cheek hit too many nails on their heads, as I keep running into musician after musician who, after stepping into mi-to-highend waters ALL complain about how UNnatural the Naulius' sound to them! Again, I WANTED to like the 803, especially as my wife said it was tolerably attractive (you should have heard her swearing about the Revel F30 and Aeriel 8) but in a nearfield setup couldn't get them to cohere...nor tame those bright tweets. If only they had padded them a bit more to allow that decent midrange driver to come forward a bit. I'm not alone on this. B&W IS a large manufacturer...and so is Bose.

I'm not a real big B&W fan. But what matters is what you like. The Viennas and the B&Ws are very different sounding speakers. If I had to pick, I'd definittely go with the Viennas. Also consider Aerial.

I just auditioned the Aerial 7B's. I thought these also sounded better than the B&W 804's (Hard to compare to the Vienna's, as they were not in the same store). But, they didn't have the 803's, only the 804's and 802's. The 802's are way out of my price range, and now I am certain that the 804's lack any real bottom end.

So, I have three questions:

1)Do the 803's have the full sound I am looking for, or should I move on to the Vienna's or Aeriels (My room is 14 x 18, with a standard ceiling.?

2) Which are better, the Vienna's or Aeriels?

3) Is my Denon VER4802 really so bad?

I have a Denon4800 which is great for home theater, great decoding of those DVD's, DTS ES especially, and I'm even delighted with it on the synthesized Wide Screen for the older laser discs. But it just doesn't compare, even on Direct, to the musicality of a 2 channel Audible Illusions preamp and a monoblock B&K M200. Your weak link is certainly the Denon and IMHO you won't hear quality of these speakers.

Vienna gets my vote hands down. But something else to consider is the Beethoveen's are a 4ohm load (I don't know how low they go either)--many receivers won't do well with that. I'd recommend looking for a new amp/pre before new speakers.