Dear Dave,
I loved the older looks as well. I wanted to buy a set of 800D high gloss black only when the crossovers and stage depth would have been better.
The first time I saw the pictures of the new D3 series, I thought I was looking at B&W 800 copy speakers from China.
They don't look and sound like 22000 dollar speakers. When Monitor Audio would have come with speaker who look this, I would have been very irritated.
I will try to listen to them this month again, but I have my doubts. It looks like they have become more clinical sounding speakers. This is the last thing you want!