I am the ATC importer to the us so I am horribly biased. But I do have a many many years of selling high end audio in stores and also I have learned a lot working for different loudspeaker companies. I was a big fan of Maggie’s back in the day.
Panel speakers- dipoles- are the most room dependent speakers you can buy. Dipoles are ALL about the room. In a great room where the speakers are placed right (large spaces with lots of space in front and back) they can be glorious. They can work in small spaces but it’s rare. C
”box” speakers are designed for “half spaces”, or a normal room with speakers placed on one end. This is usually easier to make work as you aren’t dealing with output in two different directions. Acoustics are extremely complex and much harder than any other part of home audio. It’s fine to take this on if you love science, but for most of us, figuring out the rest of the system is hard enough!
My suggestion is to find a way to try a pair of good box speakers in your room. If it’s ATC, something like the new scm20a would tell you need to know.
brad