and then this guy shoots it all to H 3 dbl hockey sticks lol
Craig John posted a good argument for monitor + sub. In theory that would be correct, but as someone else already mentioned though, IMHO it's more of a personal preference. In my experience, I have started with a good monitor and sub system (Revel + Velodyne). The sound was good, but I had to spend a lot of time with integration. The bass from subwoofer would not blend very well with the sound from monitors. That's even with the aid of room correction software built into Velodyne, in addition to the bass management system from the processor. There is no problem with the amount and quality of bass. It's just that it wouldn't blend very well. The sound from bottom to top wouldn't sound very coherent. That's when I started looking for full range speakers. When I finally got a pair of Focal, they sounded much more coherent across the frequency spectrum.
In theory the subwoofer placement is much easier than the speaker placement. In practice, it depends on the cross over frequency and slope of the cross over. With typical installation with 80Hz cross over, the subwoofer may reproduce enough midbass and it will lose the advantage of being unidirectional. You will be able to point out where the subwoofer is located. That was the case for me at least, with 80Hz cross over. I ended up crossing over at 50Hz with better results.
As pointed out earlier, true full range speakers should reproduce down to 20Hz. Many of the floor standers do not reproduce 20Hz, thus technically are not full range speakers. But that is a technical definition, and not an indication of inferior sound as it may incorrectly infer. My Focals go down to 33Hz in anechoic chamber, and technically they are not full range speakers. The in room response probably extends to 25-30Hz. But the overall coherency from the treble all the way down to whatever low frequency it can reproduce is much much better than monitors + subwoofer system.
I would say the floor stander speakers will have an edge in overall sound coherency in most cases. It's possible to configure a pair of monitors and a subwoofer to sound better than comparable floor standers. But it is not as easy as it seems. You would probably end up putting in dozens of hours tweaking the cross over frequency and other bass management system before you reach that state. For most people, who wouldn't spend more than 30 minutes to an hour for initial set up of the speakers, I bet the floor standers would sound better than monitors and a subwoofer.
