Bookshelf vs floor-standing speakers: which suits your room

Cabinet volume, cone area and the bass

The names describe where a speaker sits, and what changes the sound is the size of the box and how many woofers it holds. Both bookshelf speakers reviewed here use a single 6.5-inch woofer that covers the bass and the midrange together. The four floor-standers use two or three woofers each, in cabinets that stand on their own feet (three of them over a meter tall), and the three-way models add a separate midrange driver.

Two rules of physics follow. The first ties depth to box size. For a given design, a speaker's efficiency depends on its cabinet volume multiplied by the cube of its lowest frequency, so going an octave deeper at the same sensitivity takes about eight times the volume. Speaker designers call it Hofmann's iron law: a small box can play deep or play loud per watt, and it can't do both.

The second ties bass level to cone area. Two woofers move twice the air of one at the same excursion, so they reach a given level in the bass with each cone traveling half as far, which means less strain and less distortion on loud, low notes.

Why the bass figures overlap

You might expect the spec sheets to show that difference, and on this site's reviews they mostly don't. The Taga Harmony DIAMOND B-60 v.3 bookshelf is quoted at 36 Hz and the active Taga Harmony TAV-500B v.2 at 30 Hz, while the four floor-standers are quoted between 35 and 44 Hz. Only one of those six figures comes with a tolerance, and a limit quoted without one can't be compared with anything. How to read them is on the sub-bass page.

The reviews show where the gap appears instead. The TAV-500B v.2's reviewer expected the bass to end around 45 Hz at most and then never used the subwoofer set aside for it, yet the review still says the pair "won't necessarily shake the room" the way a dedicated subwoofer does. The DIAMOND B-60 v.3 review, 36 Hz figure and all, lists limited sub-bass extension as a con and recommends a subwoofer for home theater. What the bigger cabinet adds is output: how loud the lowest notes can go before they strain, and how large a room they can fill.

What a floor-stander's extra cabinet buys

More cone area buys level and ease at the bottom. The Triangle Borea BR09 spreads its low end across three 165 mm bass drivers, and its review rates a subwoofer optional with that much extension, though still highly recommended. A tall cabinet also puts the tweeter close to seated ear height without a stand, and a three-way design lets a dedicated midrange driver cover the voice band while the woofers handle the bass.

The costs are price, weight and the room. The Taga Harmony TAV-607F review opens on this page's question, higher-end bookshelf monitors or cheaper full-size floor-standers, and the TAV-607F is the second answer: a three-way floor-stander with twin 6.5-inch woofers at €699/pair. Its review hears enough punch to fill a medium-sized room, and lists the vinyl wrap and the 14 kg weight, light for a floor-stander, among its cons.

More bass output also means more energy driving the room's resonances. The Borea BR09 is recommended for rooms above 30 m², and its review expects it to do fine in much smaller ones on one condition: it can't go too close to the rear or side walls, or the bass runs into trouble.

Why a bookshelf speaker needs a stand

Despite the name, a shelf in a bookcase is a poor place for one. The surfaces around the cabinet reinforce the bass unevenly, and reflections off the shelf edges reach you a fraction of a millisecond after the direct sound, which produces the hollow coloration of comb filtering. A rigid stand lifts the tweeter to ear height and lets you choose the distance to the walls.

For reference, the EBU's listening-room specification puts loudspeaker acoustic centers at least 1.2 m up, aimed at a seated listener's ears, and at least 1 m from the surrounding walls. It was written for broadcast monitoring rooms and few living rooms allow a full meter, but moving a speaker out from the wall reduces the bass the wall adds. A rear-ported speaker also needs space behind it for the port, as the bass reflex page explains.

Choosing by room, wall distance and music

In a small room, or one where the speakers have to sit near a wall, a good bookshelf pair on stands is the easier setup, and bass can be added later: the TAV-500B v.2 has a subwoofer output for it. Active bookshelf models build the amplifier in. The TAV-500B v.2 carries 2 × 40 W RMS of Class D amplification and takes USB, optical, RCA and Bluetooth inputs, so it needs a source and nothing else.

Small doesn't mean undemanding, either. The DIAMOND B-60 v.3 is a passive bookshelf speaker whose review calls it an easy load for most amplifiers, yet advises at least 100 W to open it up.

In a medium or large room, played at realistic levels with bass-heavy music or films, floor-standers earn the extra floor space, provided they can stand clear of the walls. Before you buy either, the room mode calculator shows which bass frequencies your room will exaggerate, and the best speakers guide ranks all six reviewed pairs, bookshelf and floor-standing, by score.