B&W Nautilus 803 or B&W 702 S2?

@auxinput

True. I have heard the B&W 802 D3 at the shop driven by all McIntosh tube power amp and preamp and didn’t like the sound at all. For some reason, B&W will not pair well with some tube amps, not all. Better off with SS amps. I think the B&W D3 do pair well with SS McIntosh amps, Classe Delta series class AB & Classe Omega series class A amps, some Sim, D’Agostino, Ayre & Naim amps among others.

My B&W 800 D3 front speakers that I have in my dedicated home theater room are driven by a pair of Classe Delta CAM-600 monoblock amps (class AB) and they sounded spectacular together. My matching B&W HTML1 D3 center speaker is being driven by a single Classe Delta CAM-300 monoblock amp (class AB), and the rest of my surround speakers (matching B&W 800 D3 series custom theater in-wall speakers) are driven by two Classe Delta CA-2300 stereo amps (class AB). And finally, my 4 overhead height ceiling speakers for Atmos setup are driven by two Classe Sigma Amp2 amps (class D) since my new Lyngdorf MP-50 AV processor does not have RCA single-ended analog audio outputs only XLR. For those 4 overhead height ceiling Atmos speakers I was originally gonna get the Clase Sigma Amp5 five-channel amp but the problem was that the Sigma Amp5 has XLR inputs only for first two channels and the rest of the channels are only available in single-ended inputs. Overall, they all sound terrific together for home theater use.

However, last year I did try bringing my B&W 800 D3 along with the Classe Delta CAM-600 monoblock amps over to my dedicated two-channel listening room and hook them up with the ARC Reference 10 linestage tube preamp that I had at the time with the DCS Vivaldi full four stacks (Vivaldi master clock, Vivaldi upsampler, Vivaldi DAC, Vivaldi CD/SACD transport) served as my digital front end source components. They sounded spectacular together and those were great combo for the B&W 800 D3 IMO driven by SS amps (Classe CAM-600 monoblocks class AB) paired with the ARC Ref 10 tube linestage preamp. Then I also swapped the Classe CAM-600 monoblock amps with the D’Agostino Momentum M400 monoblock amps that I had in there at the time and the overall results was also spectacular.

About 15 years ago, I drove B&W Notilus 801 with Jadis 500.

That combination gave most powerful bass and wide soundstage that I had at my home. 

I used CEC TL0 and DCS Elgar for front end.

B&W speaker sound fidelity beats any other speakers in every class for musicality, transparency, detail, sound stage - they sound as close to live music as you will get.

HI

My 2 cents I'm driving my 802D3 with Tenor OTL and generally don't push them to 90db at the listening location, the sound is exquisite.  They seem to still have headroom if you can stand to be in the room above 90db, no stress on the amp or the speakers.  I've recently invested in an Accuphase DG 68 to overcome room acoustics and am interested to see if it really is worth the money, on Fleetwood Mac and Jars of Clay now I'm getting satisfying bass and low end otherwise on most recordings it's slim.  Ensuring the spikes are dug in and the nuts are locked make a difference tightening up and defining the bass.

Duffster

@gebowers In my experience B&W speakers sound very "hi-fi", with boosts in upper mid to make it seem more impressive upon show room audition, however over long listening periods the presentation become unnatural and fatiguing.