Floorstanding vs. bookshelf + sub

[E-Stat]

MY QUESTION IS if I should get a pair of decent bookshelves (looking at NHT classic 3, B&W 602) to go with the sub, OR sell/remove the sub and instead get some decent floorstanders

I favor the small monitor / EQed subs (plural) route for two reasons:

1. Ideally, one would have complete flexibility of speaker and furniture placement along with employing enough bass traps to adequately battle room modes and ensure truly neutral bass response. Unfortunately, such is not practical in most environments. (I am quite fortunate in that one of my systems does use that approach) Using a parametric or third octave EQ on the subs only (crossed over high enough to be valuable), however, can achieve that goal in less flexible spaces without compromising the integrity of the full range signal.

2. Since the low end tends to require more power and thus tendency to clip amplifiers, bi-amping separates the sins of the woofers from that of the rest of the signal.

...it's rare that a musical recording emphasizes that low of bass as an important part of the music

I'll disagree there. "Weight" is as important to classical music as it is to many popular genres.

rw