Floor standing or stand mounted bookshelves?

Well set up, two monitors and a sub can give you better quality than a pair of towers. But it depends on the speakers, your room, and how much flexibility your signif. other will grant you regarding furniture layout.

Bottom line: The only way to know is to try it out.

I have always found better integration of treble/mid and bass with floorstanders as opposed to a satellite/sub combo. You also save the expense and clutter of interconnects. As far as space goes, the footprint of my current floorstanders is the same as the stand mounted speakers I used to have. In fact a stand mounted speaker, plus a sub, may take up more room than a floorstanding speaker because of the extra space rquired by the sub. Also, you mentioned that you use your system for HT. A good floorstanding speaker may give good bass for HT effects. You don't necessarily need to add a sub. On the other hand, if you have small bookshelfs, the sub will also be small. In effect, it will be a woofer for the small speaker, rather than a true sub. It seems counterintuitive, but you may get better bass for HT with a floorstanding speaker rather than using a small satellite/sub combo.

Hey check out the "Sason" at Ridge Street Audio..You'll both be happy!

To get good sound you need good stands...the stands take up floor space, maybe not as much?...depends.

Dave