nautilus 801 bass accuracy

How big is your room? Have you played around with set-up? Perhaps you have the speakers to close to the back wall? The sound you get from a speakers is always the reaction and relationship of the room with the speakers. If at all pull those mothers away from the back wall and make sure they are not too close to the sides either. Unfortunately, unless you have a large room ( bigger than 20 x 20 ) I do not see you fixing this situation especially if your set-up is not symmetrical.
What is really confusing is that you say there is a "lack of bloom and definition," and that is sounds like standing waves. Standing waves cause "bloom or boom", not the lack of it and most often is a coloration. Have you anyway to measure the speakers with something like a cheap RS SPL meter and something like Stereophile test CD?
If you have a small room or the inability to have a symmetrical layout with NOTHING in-between the speakers then I say sell the speakers and get something with less low bass extension but with an upper-bass tilt.
Also, make sure you speakers are wired in-phase.
Keith

on some newer rock records the big fat bass sound is the way the recording is engineered. remember,most playback today is done in cars and on pc's.

With a speaker the size of 801s, placement will be critical. Have you tried to measure the room w/test disc & spl meter? This would certainly be the best way to find out if the room & placement are the issue, or at least a big part of the issue....Cheers,
Spencer

PS: lots of good info on rives.com on this topic

http://www.northcreekmusic.com

has an improved crossover available for your speakers. Scroll down the linked page untill you see the link.

Hopefully our resource section can help you. Be sure to read up on room modes and use the room simulator. If you find you have a serious room mode issue you may need something like the PARC--but be sure to try all other avenues such as speaker placement before going to a parametric like the PARC.

resources
You will see the room simulator and listening room on the menu to the left.

Room plays a big part as people have already mentioned.

Also the Rega Planet is a single bit dac that starts to get compressed when things get busy on the recording, try borrowing a better CD player.

Great responses. The poor bass quality or lack of bass definition has been improved upon over the last two months with speaker placement. I used rives room simulator a month ago and found the results to be the best placement(almost six feet out from the fronts). The set up is symmetrical with nothing in between and my room is 17 x 20 but I can increase the length to 27 feet and planning to do this soon. The bass is amazing on many recordings but not great and not terrible on others.
I will order a test disc and I have a radio shack spl meter.
The bass is much better when the music is not busy which points to Cytocycle comments about the cd player but then it's the same problem with vinyl?

I'll continue to tweak the room and set up and spend more f..king money to get it right.

More comments will be appreciated... Joel

Does your room have thick heavy carpet and are the speakers using the B&W spikes or resting on the stock roller ball feet? The spikes will add increased definition and lighten up the bass. At this point, you may want to tailor the sound a bit by adding some sand bags between the resonant aluminum base plate and the floor if you decide to use the spikes.

I owned one in 14x20 room. Its bass extension is awesome, it can be felt instead of just heard. The mid bass is not overwhelming unlike typical multi small woofer design. It is better than Revel Ultima, Wilson Puppy for playing loud orchestra music.

I had the N802s for a long time and the bottom port interacts with the room differently than most speakers.  In my experience it decreases room resonance problems pretty dramatically.  The port bass comes out in all directions under the speaker and this makes a huge difference.  I replaced some N804s with N802s and I was amazed that while the 804s had very large room interaction problems the 802s measured very close to spec.  I've got a Behringer Ultracurve and measurement mic I used to do measurements with.  

I think the downside of the bottom ports is that they are a little bit indistinct.  I'd guess that is just an inherent tradeoff.