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I finally got the chance to listen to the B&W 801D, 802D and the 'old' N 801 (Nautilus without the Diamond tweeter) in the same room - a demo room at a hifi store. Unfortunately no N 802...They were driven by Halcro monoblocks, the setup was the same for each speaker - the speakers were moved to the same position one after the other.
My impressions: No surprise - each of those speakers are perfectly usable for mastering, they all share a similar sonic signature, but they all do sound different. Actually I've been surprised how different they sound. Probably the biggest difference was with the bass of these three systems - while the 801D would go down the lowest and also had the tightest bass on the other hand had the least amount of mid bass and low mids (120-350Hz). Very nice and detailed mid range and top end. To my ears a very clean sounding speaker. Since they have the same midrange driver and tweeter I expected it to sound identical to the 802D from 1k on upwards.
Surprisingly this was not the case. I can only imagine that I was psychoacousticaly fooled, since the 802D seemed to have more bass (not sub bass). Definitely more fun to listen to basswise - and to me this is a good thing. Maybe the double woofer has to do with it, which seemed not as precise but had more weight in the low end and low mids, which is exactly the oposite of what I had expected. It didn't play quite as low as the 801D and the midrange didn't seem as detailed, which I atribute to psychoacoustics.
The 'old' N 801 also had a little mor sub bass than the 802D, but sonically seemed closer to the 802D than the 801D. Also more mid bass than the 801D, more fun to listen to, not quite as clean. The 801D probably has a more pleasing midrange and detailed top end.
To me there was no clear winner - if you like clean the 801D to my ears was the clear winner. For those (like me) who like to hear and feel more bass you'd have to decide between less sub bass, a more pleasing midrange/detailed top end (802D) and a little tighter overall bass, more sub bass, less detailed top end but cheaper price of the N801 (used about half the price of a new 802D).
To me maybe the most convincing argument was the price, since all of the three of them sounded very good. The cost of our new studio keeps constantly rising - and we're in the design phase, we haven't even started construction yet...
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