Speakers, floor standing or Bookshelfs

I thought about this a good bit a few years ago when I was putting my system together.  My previous couple of systems consisted of floor standing speakers and subwoofers.  I think that what @ghdprentice says above is mostly where I’m at now.  My floor standing speakers have a 3dB down at 32 Hz, so almost full range and they are setup in a room just a bit wider than @jbuhl mentions above.  My REL subwoofers come in at the bottom of their crossover range and add minimally to the overall bottom end.  That said, I eliminated the baby REL, because my goal was to only move air down low and I have two subwoofers (more would be better to even out the bass in a medium/small room).  Recently, Juan of @blisshifi tuned my system/room.  One of the first things that he did was to turn off the subs and to my surprise, what was heard was more musical and with greater clarity.  Yup, my subs volume was set too high.  I thought the crossover was set at the lowest point, but that might not have been the case.  When Juan was done, there was a benefit to the subs, but it was more subtle and they weren’t destroying the lower octaves produced by the main speakers.As an aside, Juan suggested that more subwoofers might be beneficial in my smallish medium size room.  When it is all said and done, might I have been better to take the extra money spent on subs and gone with a better speaker?  I don’t know, but it was something that I did not consider because I tried to keep cost down at each stage, without looking at the money I would be spending at the back end of the buying process.

Thanks you all of you for the input. My room is a medium L shape where I always have to play with toeing the speakers due to one of the speakers having to be placed into the bottom part of the "L" wall to avoid as much reflections from the wall in front of it.

I gather that bookshelf speakers (on stands) would present a little more challenging task with imaging/capacity to fill the room.

So, For me, to keep full range speakers, plus two subs seems to be the best option.

Unlike an HT multiple speaker system, a two channel set up with a well integrated sub(s) generally improves the overall dimensionality, imaging and tonal density of any speaker system regardless of the lower frequency response of the speaker.

Unlike an HT multiple speaker system, a two channel set up with a well integrated sub(s) generally improves the overall dimensionality, imaging and tonal density of any speaker system regardless of the lower frequency response of the speaker.

@bubinga 

YES!

This is something that does not get mentioned nearly often enough.

There is a lot of ambient information in the very low frequencies, that convey a sense of space, that can be missing without the sub.

Subs always subs. Buy the largest speakers you can afford. All speakers lack the dynamics of real music and getting as close to real live performance comes from dynamics. Big efficient speakers with sub and massive power is the key. Handing off from a small dynamically limited speakers to a very powerful subs never blends quite as well as a big speaker.