Speaker type: is more affected by room acoustics

Neither, inherently. You could say that monitors (the smaller ones with limited bass output) are possibly less likely to run into standing wave problems, but that would probably simply be due mainly to the comparative reduction of bass energy in the same room.

But, generally, bass problems have different causes and solutions than reverb and echo. In part that may have more to do with the fact that, to our ears, sound becomes basically more directional as frequency rises. When you start getting up into the midrange you're getting into the area of noticeably increased dispersion. Dispersion is usually greatest with Omni-directional types (some Walsh, Atmosphere...). Next, in order of decreasing dispersion, would likely come the dipoles. Then may come standard, box monopoles that use conventional cone or dome drivers. If their crossovers are up to par, they usually have rather wide dispersion in the room, those with narrow front baffles may be thought of as having the widest among them. Those monopoles that use non-standard drivers (like ribbon tweeters or midranges, for example) may have noticeably less wide dispersion than with conventional drivers, though. Last, I suppose, would be the speakers that have been specially engineered by the maker to be narrow dispersion speakers, or may have a specially designed apparatus attached to the baffle that is meant to accomplished this task. That would be speakers like those from Emerald Physics, Wavetouch, VMPS or any other design that uses an array of horns or waveguides, etc for that purpose.

Lots of manufacturers will give you the spiel about how restricting the width of the dispersion in the room will greatly reduce the effect of interactions. IME, a well designed conventional monopole can have (in a good system) a "true, 3D, walk-thru soundstage" as you may have read of before. The restricted dispersion designs can have just as great a soundstage at the LP, it's just that if you move much off axis, or stand up and walk around, the stage collapses.

Otherwise, what is said about the advantages of restricted dispersion designs I believe is pretty much true...EXCEPT, I don't find there's anything particularly superior over conventional designs concerning those claims - Theoretically. But, Practically - that may be another matter. For example, it's true that conventional box designs (with conventional drivers) are going to sound perfectly fine AS LONG AS THEY'RE SET UP IN A PROPERLY SIZED, PROPERLY PROPORTIONED ROOM! But, this is not everybody's circumstance, certainly. Well, maybe some people did not think the original problem through and overbought the speakers that would integrate into their room. But, then again maybe the room in their home is a horribly funky shape, or too small, or whatever and they're just stuck with it. But, that's a case in which it's very likely to hear a comparatively clear improvement with dispersion restricted speakers. But, what I'm saying is, that makes their advantage primarily a practical one not, in truth, a theoretical one, as I think some would believe. Your stage does collapse as you move off axis, but the quality of the stage depth, width, height and placement, I don't believe, can be said to be any worse or better at the LP than the properly implemented conventional approach. It's how problematic the room is that should be the determining factor. No reason that restricted dispersion speakers cannot be used equally well in ideal rooms, either, but I think their real advantage over conventional designs is their use in truly "problem" rooms.

Apart from that, it may just be a matter of room treatments, if needed.

I'll say floor standers merely because bass drivers can interact heavily with suspended plywood floors commonly used in modern homes to the point of obscuring the rest, and bass drivers tend to be located lower down with floor standers specifically to enhance bass levels.

I've run the same setups both in my basement with thin padded carpet over concrete foundation and in various rooms the next level up with suspended plywood floors and similar flooring and the difference in the flooring is by far the biggest factor that makes the same speakers sound way different.

Monitors on stands are not fully immune either but perhaps less susceptible overall.

The solution I have applied with success is to place speakers on isolating stands or platforms which greatly cleans things up. See my system pics for examples.

Think of the room as being part of the speaker.

Asking questions about improving the speaker/room interaction is, imo, asking the right questions. The speaker and room form a system, and these two parts of the system do not always work well together. But they can.

In my opinion the best approach is to examine what causes negative room interactions and try to address those causes. I realize that's more complicated than simply replying with "monitors are better" or "floorstanders are better", but play along for the next few paragraphs.

Standing waves in the bass region are inevitable from any given bass source within the room, but their peak-and-dip patterns can be de-correlated somewhat and thus minimized by having multiple bass sources spread around the room. This results in multiple dissimilar standing wave peak-and-dip patterns, whose sum is smoother than any one of them alone. A floorstander designed with this in mind can spread the bass sources further apart than can a stand-mount speaker simply because there's more physical distance available within a bigger box. But if the design doesn't spread the bass sources apart, then a floorstander has no inherent advantage over a stand-mount in this area.

In some cases the ability to make broad adjustments to the shape of the low-frequency response can be useful to deal with too much or too little boundary reinforcement. User-adjustable port tuning would be one way to do this.

Reverberation is beneficial in many ways if done right. It enriches timbre, spaciousness, sense of envelopment, and even clarity. What is reverberation "done right"? Well, what you get in a good recital hall would be an example: the reverberant field is spectrally correct, diffuse, arrives after a fairly long time delay, and decays smoothly across the spectrum. Some of these characteristics are largely room-acoustics-dependent, but the loudspeaker system can either work with or against the room based largely on what it's doing off-axis. Imo the floorstander format offers more opportunity for the designer to do a system that works with rather than against the room, but if he doesn't do that, then once again a floorstander has no inherent advantage.

Slap echo is a room acoustics problem, but a relatively uniform and somewhat narrower than normal radiation pattern, along with aggressive toe-in, will help avoid undesirable strong early sidewall reflections. Some rooms are simply inherently brighter than others, and a low-distortion means of adjusting the high frequency balance of the system can be useful.

Getting a good speaker-room interaction is something I have put a bit of study into. In my experience speakers that do a good job of getting the reverberant field right tend to be more engaging and less fatiguing long-term. But I'm certainly not the only designer to attach high priority to getting the reverberant field right (which admittedly can mean different things to different designers).

Duke
dealer/manufacturer