A fully developed transducer with musicality and accuracy.

Associated gear must be of the highest caliber!!

I replaced my Watt/Puppy 6''s with these speakers...need I say more...they allow the music to touch my soul in a way I thought wasn''t possible! FYI..I use a new Krell 400cx amp with an ARC Ref2mkII PREAMP, Levinson 37 transport and 360s DAC lashed up with all Transparent Reference cabling and power cords. My previous review on these speakers was in error...the speakers were new...the amplification was suspect and the speaker placement was less than appropriate!!

Similar Products Used:

Dunlavy SC-5, puppy 6''s

Big sound, huge dynamics, pinpoint imaging

Big, heavy speaker

The Nautilus 801s are amazing speakers. I shopped around and spent a lot of time listening to the competition including Dunlavy, Magnepan, ATC, Vandersteen, Wilson, and Hales. The only speaker that came close to the 801s were the ATCs but they did not have the pinpoint imaging. My wife loves the look and is decorating our listening room around the speakers. Very expensive, but so are most other speakers of this quality. Highly recommended.

Similar Products Used:

Apogee Stage, Apogee Duetta, Hales Concept 5

TO benefit us reader, could Kevlin briefly describe what were his associated equipment setup that were used in his research? What other speakers were tested?

20 YEARS OF R&D, Long Long life.

what there are, are the envy of every other manufacturer

I don't actually own a pair of these speakers but I have seen / heard them in several different sounding showrooms. I have also read (with raised eyebrows) the previous postings from Kevin ? which caused quite a stir. Anyone considering buying a pair should check out the review in Stereophile Magazine - January 1999 by Wes Phillips which will give you some tips on how to get the best out of them as well as a very thorough objective and subjective evaluation. As an engineer myself I tend to place a fair emphasis on objective test performance, provided of course it's conducted correctly. The Stereophile objective analysis graphically indicates that the B&W 801N is one hell of a speaker and probably the most accurate moving coil cone speaker made by anyone. In Australia these speakers retail for $27,000 which is almost a third of my yearly salary so unfortunately I'm unable to afford to race out and buy a pair but if I win lotto next week and cost is suddenly no object then the 801N will definitely be the next speaker to grace my loungeroom floor.

The real sound

Be careful when touch the top!!!!

Templar, shame on you. How you dare give only one star to the best monitor luodspeaker of the moment? Probably you are green of envy....it is too expensive
My opinion? Simply the real music in your room
Good listen

Similar Products Used:

Matrix 801, 805

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Dave ---- I think your opinion is baseless and it sounds like an inmature attempt to thwart people's interest in a world class speaker that has surpassed cynic's expectations over and over.

"boxy, boxy, boxy?" That's one mistake u made. The N801 physically is not capable of having a boxy sound (unless the software causes the speakers to generate such a sound) as it's enclosures do not physically represent the those frequencies that are considered "boxy"

Your enthusiasm in PMC sounds like you work for them, which further supports my guess that you're opinion on the 801 is in fact biased, and excuse me of saying this - scandalous.

You are aware that kelvar drivers need months to fully optimise don't you? And that you need a very large room and the environment to play it at louder levels. The imaging, headroom and dynamics and clarity is unmatched by anything - even the Nautilus has to pave way to it in some respects.

The N801's are the most popular choices from the classical music industry, were they need a detailed, balanced and realistic sounding speaker to monitor the recordings in terms of balance and stereo imagery alignment. PMC are used for POP, Hollywood - and other mass market processed recordings.

Similar Products Used:

n/a

Everything

None

I can't believe that this speaker has an average review of under 4. It just goes to show how many uninformed and inappropriate reviews there are on this site. It's almost enough to discredit this forum entirely.

Floks, this is a fantastic lively speaker. It is $12,000, so if that seems high to you then you probably also skimped and have these beauties hooked up to sub-standard amps.

Also, did you listen to these in a store with lots of other speakers in the same room? Was the room properly set up with the appropriate sound absorbing and sound-proofing materials? Were you in a small room?

These speakers will always sound bad in an apartment or small room. They will always sound bad when attached to cheap components. They will always sound bad to someone who walks into an audition with a chip on their shoulder about their price. These speakers are not the most expensive made....you can spend well into the $50,000 range on speakers that I believe sound very similar to these.

there simply is no better speaker for the money. Those of you who gave this speaker anything less than a 4 star review are simly being morons.

Soundstage

Harsh upper midrange/lower treble

I just completed an audition of B&W 801 Nautilus'. I have to admit up front that what I have to say does not necessarily constitute a "fair" evaluation. My audition of the 801 was limited to about an hour and the listening environment while not bad was cluttered with a lot of other speakers and other gear which may have detracted from the sound quality. (Although there was nothing in between me and the speakers and there was nothing in between the speakers) In addition, I was primarily auditioning a Boulder 500M amplifier (maybe that was the problem). That said, I was very disappointed in the 801s Nautilus'. My audition stopped after an hour because of this disapointment.

Aside from the breadth of soundstage which received a passing grade I could find little which matched or exceeded other speakers in this price range or below. True they are less expensive than the Revel Salon, but in my audition the B&W's did not come close. The Nautilaus' are more expensive that the Hales Eight Transcendence but I found the Hales to sound much more accurate but at the same time FAR more palatable. While the Revel's were probably driven with superior electronics (Spectral and Wadia) the Hales were driven with a Sunfire amp with a Merdian CD).

I found the lower midrange through the upper treble of the Nautilas' to be, at times, much too harsh. The brass in a Reference Recording Bruckner Recording as well as other recording had far too much "bite" and were reproduced out of proportion to the rest of the orchestra.

The bass was tight, fast and true, but the speakers were not able to produce the sustained organ notes of a Polunc Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani. The bass in that recording in not loud, but it is sustained and LOW, clearly below 30 HZ. I have heard this passage live and on my on system (the Nestorovic System 12A)and the B&W simply did not provide a replication of what was on the recording. Overall the bass while it had some good attributes lacked authority and weight that I have come to expect. But keep in mind that bass reproduction is SOO room dependent that there could have been other variables at work here.

Short of audtioning these speakers at home you should audition them in several environments (acoustic and electronic)

Associated electronics were as follows:

Boulder 500M amp
Boulder L5M pre amp
California Labs CD player (I don't know which model)
Monster Cable (I don't know which ones but they looked like top line stuff)

Robert C. Lang

Similar Products Used:

Revel Salons, Hales Eights

reference speaker

reference speaker

hmmmm, alot of hard feelings concerning this speaker...

N801 is hailed by some as the greatest speaker of all time. is it? yes and no. a reference speaker should be ruthlessly revealing, cause it's main function is in my opinon to be used in the recording studio. and N801 is the best reference speaker that I have ever heard. so is it completly useless for homeuse? certainly not, IF you listen to SOUND instead of MUSIC it's probably the perfect speaker.

but if you like to listen to MUSIC (like myself and I think most of the others who have given the N801 bad ratings). there are certainly better options (some in b&w's own productlines). but in my opinion the best speaker for MUSIC is the JMlab Mezzo Utopia (havn't had the chance listen to the bigger models in the utopia range). didn't get the feeling that I was listening to speakers at all. and that's the highest praise I can give to a loudspeaker...

Similar Products Used:

JMlab Utopia Mezzo

Beautiful at mid-range sound and workmanship

need long hours to run in, particular the bass

Sound stage are very good, but you have a very good gear to drive it. I used 33H, 380S, 360 and 31 from ML, but still not good enough. I may need two more 33H???

I want to share with other B&W lover, 801N needs longer time to run in. I heard once in NYC, the sound stage was very good. However, after few months tried in my room, it does not perform as I expected. Please help.

Similar Products Used:

Thiel