Bookshelf or Tower

Very interesting Bob. The one advantage I've read about in regards to floorstanders is the dedicated midrange driver. I was always under the impression that it was better to have separate drivers handle the musical information, rather than one driver for do everything (as in the case with a monitor). But your points do make sense!

Dumb question of the day...
What exactly do you mean to 'high pass'?
Does that mean to run the small speakers off of the sub rather than straight from the amplifier ? Or are you letting the preamp do the signal dividing ?

Sorry for my ignorance .

OP reporting back to say I ended up getting the Paradigm Signature S6's.

The deciding factor was seeing the limit of the particular monitor I was interested in, the Paradigm Signature S2.

In a certain song, a pop rock mellow acoustical, with violin in background and acoustic guitar up front and Ryan Adams vocals, the whining violin distorted at a med-high volume with the S2's but with the S6's were clear and defined and there was room to go higher. So I extrapolated out and said that is just an indication of the overall precision and truth to the sound. Is that because the towers have more power handling?

After hearing that, as much as I love the idea of a monitor, I knew the towers were the right choice for me.