Floor standing or stand mounted bookshelves?


I am very close to springing for a new pair of Usher 6371s, with their X616 center. That said, I have limited space and my wife has voiced her preference for stand mounted bookshelves, as they are more diminutive and would be less imposing on the small room.

However, I pointed out to her that if we do stand mounted bookshelves, we are really going to need a subwoofer, a lot more than if we used floorstanding, and I have to agree we have very limited room for a subwoofer, I'd rather live with the floor standing.

My question though is whether a set of high end bookshelves + subwoofer can really provide the quality sound equal to a set of 2.5way floorstanding speakers like the Usher 6371s..

I will be using these speakers with my Arcam AVR-250 and a split of 50/50 for music and home theater..

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

Dave