Floor standers or Monitors?

First question is bass quality. How do you like it? I have trouble with integrating subs very well. For me, great bass is super important and for that I find that monitors +sub can't compete with floorstanders. At least so far.

However one big advantage of going with monitors + sub is that you can dial out your primary room mode if you do it carefully. You can have monitors that roll off before your room mode and then set your sub's crossover to be right below the mode. This can work great in a problematic room where floorstanders would never quite work out (unless you sacrifice bass extension, of course).

For high eff in a full range floorstander, I would take a look at Coincident Technology out of Canada. They aren't speakers on the beaten path but they are designed with a careful balance between extenstion and efficiency. Their reviews are excellent overall. And I bet your BAT would love their fantastic impedance curves.

I don't think you can generalize that monitors would surpass floorstanders in the same price range. It will absolutely depend on your priorities. Note that not everyone here will have the same priorities you do.

Arthur

Good points from Arthur. I'd add my own generalization about the two different routes: Floorstanders certainly lend a fullness in the low end that monitors will fall short on. If the floorstander is a 3-way (or more), vs. a 2-way monitor, where I've found the monitor excels is in creating a more laser-focused image of instruments/vocalists in space whereas the multi-way floorstanders tend to diffuse that image slightly. It is not as much a matter of sound staging (width/depth), but one of focus. Monitors seem to be champs at both disappearing and at creating a very convincing soundstage, though I've heard some floorstanders that are pretty damn good. I think both designs well-implemented can do a great job creating a soundstage, but the fewer and closer the drivers, and the fewer the crossover points, it seems to me the more focused and sharp (lifelike, if it occurs to you that way) the images themselves become. This is one of the ways single-driver and concentric driver speakers excel, where the full range of sound is coming from a single point (or a single point on each side). Again, this is a generalization based upon my personal experiences over the years. I like what each route has to offer. I've not done much listening with subs, so can't comment much there, other than integrating them into system and room is ever so critical.

Marco

Von Schweikert, among others, have addressed the problem by producing speakers which are comprised of two seperate cabinets. An upper mid/trebile box and a lower bass module, physically separated from one another to isolate lower bass cabinet resonance from the upper unit. Seems to work quite well. I know I love mine and it seems to produce the level of imaging and separation I get from the monitors in my secondary system.