I want to buy speakers for my home music system. What is the difference between bookshelf speakers and floorstanding speakers? What would I be better off with, with around 250$ to spend?What has better sound?
This will depend mainly on your own personal use. The floor standing speaker is much larger and has more volume for bass than the bookshelf. Most of all the brand of the speaker can also make a difference. For quality and reliability stay with name brand speaker, instead of those bargain price speaker. Keep in mind, you get what you pay for. Hope this will help you out.
Depends what you buy. All types of brands from bookshelf and floor standing speakers have all different types of quality and frequency ranges. I would go with floor standing speakers, but they are most likely self powerd, and would cost more. I like bookshelf speakers cause you can hook them up to any amplifier you'd like, and they are light weight. Floor standing might have more bass, only if they have a built in subwoofer. Otherwise go with book shelf speakers. Go to frys. best deals around, better then best buy, circuit city, radiioshack etc.
$250 may be a bit low for your main speakers if you are looking for floorstanders. I would suggest picking up a decent pair of book shelf speakers and when you can afford better main speakers, use your bookshelfs as surrounds.
Floor standing speakers generally provide a richer sound and have a wider frequency response. They can provide deep bass so at times, you may not even need a subwoofer. Bookshelf speakers on the other hand, usually require an additional sub because they cannot reproduce low-frequencies very well due to their small drivers. The guy above me Fisher doesn't really know what he's talking about. In general, most floor standing speakers are NOT self-powered. Depending on the efficiency of the speaker, floor standing speakers usually require more power to operate properly, so you need a decent amp or receiver to drive them. So to answer your question, I would go with floor-standers just because they have a wider frequency range and because I like big speakers :D HOWEVER, with a $250 budget, you will not be able to purchase very good floor-standing speakers. You need to bump your budget up to AT LEAST $400 to get a decent pair of floor-standers.
