[Ultralight]

Thank you all for the excellent and informed responses. Very grateful for the helpful insights.

The only question I have is the statement about imaging and bass management.  I've heard excellent imaging from floorstanders as well that have been designed with curved and very narrow fronts. 

And with bass management, would bass trap on corners go a long ways towards solving the problems?

Thanks,
UL

[rajacat]

Generally, I find that monitors look a little odd and insecure especially if they're mounted on skinny pole stands. IMO its easier to design a more esthetically pleasing speaker if they're floorstanders.
I designed and built stands for my Omega Bipole monitors so that they almost matched the width of the baffle. This allows the "beard effect" that supplements the single drivers' bass output. I also filled the stands with plastic bags of sand for mass and security. This arrangement allows me to break everything down for easy moving.

[Quiet Earth]

Totally agree with the beard comment. Don't fear the beard!

My monitors are kind of in between monitors and floor standers. They are too big to be monitors and yet they need stands. They are too small to be floors standers because,,,  they need stands? Here they are, beard and all :

[JLM]

Floor-standers can image well, if designed like a stand-mount (narrow, minimum number of drivers spaced close together, woofer not pushed into heavy bass duty, etc.) but then you basically have a stand-mount with built-in stand.  Note that woofers freed from heavy bass duty seem to "open up" in those critical mid-bass/midrange frequencies.


Bass traps...

Well that's a whole different topic/circle, but by using subs (correctly) the bass issues are resolved.  Every room has it's own sonic properties (it's the "other" speaker cabinet, the one we live inside of, and rightfully should be thought of in those terms).  Recommend you read Floyd E. Toole's "Sound Reproduction" to get a good insight to room acoustics before spending time/money getting frustrated chasing your tail.

[walkern]

If you go with a narrow profile floor stander to get the best imaging, you are usually limited to small woofers to augment the mids and highs.  As such, you get the awesome imaging of a stand mount, but you don't really get the same power and depth in the bass that you could get by augmenting your stand mounts with a subwoofer.  Plus, with a separate subwoofer, you may be able to adjust placement (to offset room cancellation problems) as well as the level of the bass and the crossover point for the bass to blend in a more ideal way with the mids and highs from your monitor style speaker.  In addition, in many cases the extra cost of the beautiful (but larger) cabinets associated with a narrow floor stander is as much as it would cost to add an awesome subwoofer to the less costly stand mount version of the same basic speaker.

Neil

[bladesmith]

If you go with a narrow profile floor stander to get the best imaging, you are usually limited to small woofers to augment the mids and highs.  As such, you get the awesome imaging of a stand mount, but you don't really get the same power and depth in the bass that you could get by augmenting your stand mounts with a subwoofer.  Plus, with a separate subwoofer, you may be able to adjust placement (to offset room cancellation problems) as well as the level of the bass and the crossover point for the bass to blend in a more ideal way with the mids and highs from your monitor style speaker.  In addition, in many cases the extra cost of the beautiful (but larger) cabinets associated with a narrow floor stander is as much as it would cost to add an awesome subwoofer to the less costly stand mount version of the same basic speaker.

Neil

Exactly....

[jarcher]

Basically stand mounted monitors offer greater placement flexibility and lower cost than the same thing in a narrow tower configuration (unless you opt for very pricey stands). You may be able to coax a bit more bass from a tower configuration depending on the size and design of the tower, and that may be enough to forgo a presumably more expensive powered subwoofer.

At the end of the day it's probably six or half dozen if your trying to achieve full range sound reproduction - your just deciding how and if the boxes are being sliced up.

[Ultralight]

Just reread all the comments here.

From an acoustical perspective, sounds like

1. Narrow tall floorstanders with few drivers (two) can image as well as monitors.
2. However, with small drivers even up to 7", one is not gaining much bass extension even if the cabinet has much larger internal volume. 
3. To take advantage of the additional cabinet volume, one could use additional mid/bass drivers that are still small to increase the bass extension.

Questions:
1. I am correct in 1-3 above?
2. Would additional drivers start harming imaging generally?

Thanks!
UL

[JLM]

Yes.  That leads to one argument for designing 3-way speakers with a narrow front, but use added cabinet depth to add larger passive radiators, woofer, separately powered subwoofer, or some variation thereof to the side walls.  Look at Definitive Technology or Golden Ear Technology. 

[Ultralight]

Thanks JLM.  You've been most helpful in your PMs and public replies to my many queries.  Just want to acknowledge that....

UL

[JLM]

Awww...   

[Duke]

Can you get a pair of small two way monitors, that work good down to 200 Hz ?

And still be powerful enough to work with 3 or 4 subs ?

Imo the reason for using 3 or 4 subs is quality, not quantity.  Multiple (small) subs distributed around the room is an effective technique for significantly smoothing out the in-room bass response.

200 Hz crossover is too high for a distributed multisub system - you'll be able to hear the subs as separate sound sources.  80 to 100 Hz ballpark is probably the highest I'd want to cross over, and even then care must be taken to get a good transition. 

[Gatto127]

As someone who builds monitors as a hobby I have some pointers on how to choose between monitors and floorstanders/ towers:

An assumption here is that towers are MTM and monitors are a single woofer and a single tweeter:

a) Monitors tend to have better imaging: Often times reviewers talk of monitors as having pinpoint imaging. Now, the science between this is that floorstanders rely on the resonance between two woofers to generate a couple of DB of additional sensitivity. This can result in a little muddling as the two waves from each woofer can go out of phase in other parts of the listening spectrum. In theory a monitor can be vastly more accurate for orchestral music, where the locating of instruments can paramount.

b) Monitors have less sensitivity: This is because they tend to not use the MTM configuration of two woofers in parallel (in the crossover) and hence loose roughly 2-3 DB of sensitivity. If you are not looking at tube amplification, or live in an apartment sensitivity is not an issue. However, if you like to play your music then it might be an issue.

c) Monitors have less maximum power output: primarily because maximum driver excursions are a critical restriction in any design, you need more drivers for more output, especially of the ear splitting nature. I would not drive my monitors over 95DB or 100W power, without causing damage to the drivers.

d) Monitors are lighter: Again less drivers, less size etc.

There are floorstanders with only one woofer - these tend to be high sensitivity (special) drivers, not a great fan of these. Typically a 7 inch driver goes with a 0.7 cubic foot box. Any bigger box will result in boomy bass for most drivers.

Hope this answers your query.