Is this a new trend?

Note that nearly every bookshelf speaker review says to use them on stands at least a couple of feet from the wall.

I have gone full circle from floor standers to stand mounts and back and forth again.

in my 14X18' room i found a 3 way floor stander over powers the room being 12' away. the midrange is over powering to my aging ears and harsh regardless of EQ. which only adds phase issues and loses clarity. My Elac DBR6.2 sound amazing in my room no EQ. crazy good soundstage and bring life and realism to the music. Yes i have HSU sub the passes at 50Hz. while the speaker play full range. Not going back to floor standers not in this room. 

Standmount Speakers are really all about economics. The foot-print of a stand and a floorstander are generally the same! However, the cabinet is by far the most expensive part of a speaker and the materials and labor involved with making a Standmount vs Floorstander is exponential. 
 

The difference in sound is in the bass region because you can’t cheat physics. You need cabinet volume to create bass substantial below 30HZ and most Standmounts can NOT do this. Hell, most towers speakers can’t ’actually’ measure below 30HZ. 
 

Manufacturers can charge 40-50% of the cost of a Floorstander and use 10-20% of the materials to make them! The math is pretty simple. 

Lot more to it than just bass...The floorstander (if it wasn’t designed by a bozo) will couple better into a room with its vertical woofer stack...floor bounce, modal response, etc. The crossover changes, cabinet volume affects every driver, the entire driver integration process changes, etc.. Never get fooled into thinking that a bookshelf and floorstander from the same series are the same speaker, and the floorstander just came with a lil extra bass, which you can easy peasy make up for with the crapbox bookshelf version + subwoofer.

Not to mention...If the speaker didn’t come with a dedicated stand that the designer spent significant time on (which he almost never will), you have introduced an unnecessary lousy variable called the stand.

The difference in sound is in the bass region because you can’t cheat physics. You need cabinet volume to create bass substantial below 30HZ and most Standmounts can NOT do this. Hell, most towers speakers can’t ’actually’ measure below 30HZ.

I traded my Wilson Chronosonics in on a righteous set of 1993 Realistic Minimus 7s.  My Slim Whitman records never sounded so good!