I had a similar sized room with the much lesser B&W DM640’s. They worked well with a high current amp (Classe CA-150) but were very lean with other amps I tried. They were too hot for nearfield though and I upgraded to Vandersteen 3A (now Sigs) to cure that and loaded the room with treatments. It sounded OK at best. I did demo a sub and found sub 30 Hz could not be heard in the room but down the hall it was plain as day. Eventually I moved the system to a 3x larger room and placed the speakers at each end of the couch I sit on. Ideal? No way. But the speakers opened up and breathed life into the music in that larger space. There’s imaging but no soundstage so in a way it’s like headphones. I’m fine with that. The quality of the music makes the system sound so much better than the loss of soundstage. So here’s my take. The room is too small for full range speakers. A sub may help but not below 30 Hz. Maybe try a bigger room even if speaker placement is compromised. You could find out like I did that you're missing a lot more than you think.
Heard the B&W N804d3s ...
I've owned the original iteration of the N804s since I bought them new in '01. After 15 years, I thought perhaps it was time to upgrade to a newer model. So, I auditioned the new N804d3s at a local retailer. They sounded great, and are an improvement over the originals in the areas of bass slam and airiness. However, that step up to my ears is equivalent to about 10-15%. Not sure that that sort of improvement justifies the price ($9K for the d3s vs. $3,500 for the original N804s), although "upgradeitis" tempts me to pull the plug. Is it just me, or does the law of diminishing returns apply in this case? Your thoughts on this or the qualitiative differences between the old and new Nautilus lines would be most appreciated.