B&W 804's Vs. Vienna Acoustic Beethoven

You're correct on both accounts: the N804 has a very lean (im)balance...B&W's attempt to make a small-scale 803N to satify the US distributo's request for a lower price-point item is quite a failure! As well, ALL Nautilus require a rather distant listening position in order for the drivers to cohere properly. The 803N requires about 12' before it snaps into focus. I doubt that the 804N EVER does! Ha!
In contrast I've only listened to the Beethovens briefly, but was much more positively impressed with them than the 804. If you listen in the nearfield you have other choices; if in the farfield, I'd get used 803N instead of the 804N new...but only if your sidewalls are damped enough
to tame that splashy tweeter, too! In other words, the 803N requires a LARGE room. Just my limited opinion...good luck!

Look, the 804 and 803 differ VASTLY in their spectral tilts.
The 803N can work in a large room in free space, and perhaps quite nicely. Its splashy tweeter is anathema for HT, though....
The 804N is REALLY anemic by comparison, and again, an afterthought at B&W, produced after marketing pressure to do so. They were the last to land here because B&W wouldn't give up 803N production line space to the 804N until the 803N pipeline was filled, if that tells ya anything....
I could see where the 804N works in a small room if some boundary support is used, but then the soundstage is foreshortened, of course. But they DO need lots of help at the bottom, but even then you end up with a west-coast sway-back freq resp, not a bad thing for rock/elec jazz, but anathema for classical or acoustic jazz....
Sorry to upset N804 owners with my impressions. I even found
lowly Paradigm Ref 20s to sound better balanced, or the sublime new Thiel 1.6 as another $2k giant-killer....
Thanks for the HT/2ch radiation patter/room-interface reminder, foreverhifi.

Cdc, your original tongue-in-cheek hit too many nails on their heads, as I keep running into musician after musician who, after stepping into mi-to-highend waters ALL complain about how UNnatural the Naulius' sound to them! Again, I WANTED to like the 803, especially as my wife said it was tolerably attractive (you should have heard her swearing about the Revel F30 and Aeriel 8) but in a nearfield setup couldn't get them to cohere...nor tame those bright tweets. If only they had padded them a bit more to allow that decent midrange driver to come forward a bit. I'm not alone on this. B&W IS a large manufacturer...and so is Bose.