trudellbc,
If your question is "What compact box speaker that belongs on a stand would sound best in a small room", I probably couldn't add much to the suggestions already made. I peddle ATC, which has already been suggested by Hoggshead.
On the other hand, if your question is "what reasonably sized speaker would sound best in a small room", I might have a useful suggestion.
First, let's examine a very small room - a shower stall. When you sing in the shower, what happens? Well, your voice has a much richer and warmer timbre than normal. The reason is you get lots and lots of early-arriving reflections, and this reflected energy significantly contributes to the perceived tonal balance and texture of your voice.
Now, something similar happens in a small listening room - you get lots more reflections early on than you do in a large room. And all this reflected energy significantly contributes to the perceived timbre.
Because most loudspeakers are omnidirectional in the bass and directional in the mids and highs, this reverberant energy tends to thicken the sound. The result is that the timbre of most speakers sounds unnatural in a small room.
But suppose we had a speaker that put roughly the same amount of energy out into the room up and down the frequency spectrum? Then the timbre wouldn't be thickened by all the inevitable early reflections in a small room - instead, the timbre would still sound natural.
Very few loudspeakers have radiation patterns that will give you natural timbre in a small room. The Gradient Revolution is among the few that do. It's not a "monitor" per se, but might well be better suited for the task at hand than a monitor on a stand would be. The Revolution uses some very innovative loading techniques (dipole bass and cardioid midrange) which ensure that the reverberant sound has essentially the same tonal balance as the first-arrival sound (a given with live instruments, but rarely replicated by speakers).
Yup, you guessed it - I'm a Gradient dealer. But I do believe in the Revolution - I think it's one of the most intelligently designed speakers out there. No it's not perfect, and some care must be given to amplifier matching, but it is extremely relaxing to listen to long-term at modest to fairly loud volume levels.
Best of luck to you,
Duke
