Floor Stander or Monitor w/ 2 subs? What does the later give up in a large room?


My listening room is also the Living room. My wife would love to get rid of the floor standing Silverlines. I can deal with that since I've had these for a long time. Change is good. But will it be a good move to go to monitors with 2 S-5 Rel type subs? I am considering Watkins Gen 4 speakers. I've heard them and they sound very good. But will they fill a 5000+ cu ft room?. That is my only reservation...size of imaging. What else...or am I wrong in my thinking they will lack anything? I will try them but I'd like to know what to look out 

Thanks 
128x128artemus_5
Being a designer and manufacturer of both floor standers and monitors I can comfortably say, assuming equal quality, that the total output (SPL) is what is the biggest compromise. Driving some monitor speakers to higher volumes will push them to higher distortion levels and dynamic peaks can be truncated. Adding subwoofers won't fix that. Much of what makes a system sound dynamic is happening in the midrange. In our monitors we use one high out AMT (designed and built in house) and four 6 inch woofers to achieve good total output. In our 7000 cf (approximate) evaluation room our monitors produce good SPLs but nothing like our towers. At low to reasonably loud levels they both sound great (to us). You can guess which sounds better when really pushed. 

This is my long winded way of saying build a dedicated room, if you can, and keep your floor standers.

Good monitors are a wonderful thing. Just make sure you understand them.
@arion
Good info which enforces my thoughts. However the idea of stressing the monitors is something I hadn't thought about. And that stress will show up sooner or later. Yes, new room....I hope. although I was a builder/carpenter, I am 69 yrs old and don't have the stamina I once had. Hopefully my framing sub is still in business. But he isn't that far behind me in age either. But the room will be needed when my wife retires in a few years. Gotta have somewhere to hide. :-)