What are floorstanding speakers for?
Floorstanding speakers are designed for high-quality, full-range sound, making them ideal for stereo music setups and home theatre systems. Loudspeakers come in different sizes, and with good reason. The size of the speaker cabinet has much to say in terms of the amount of deep bass a speaker can produce, as a larger volume of air lets the bass drivers (also known as woofers) reach lower notes.
In other words, a larger cabinet allows for an extended frequency response in the bass. With a larger cabinet comes the ability to include more woofers, which helps the speaker play the lower notes more loudly. This is because multiple woofers can move more air than a single woofer.
Hi-Fi floorstanding speakers are a great choice for stereo listening or as part of a home cinema setup when you want a more powerful bass than compact speakers or bookshelf speakers can deliver.
The most common way to design a larger speaker cabinet is to make it tall and deep, rather than wide. This design allows the treble and midrange drivers to be placed at the optimal height for seated listening. It’s also less visually dominating and takes up less floorspace. The result is a powerful, slim-front speaker that’s in proportion with most furniture.
How do I choose a standing floor speaker?
The best way to decide on a floorstanding speaker is always to hear it before you buy, which you can do at your nearest stereo dealer. You can find your nearest DALI retailer here.
When you book a demo, you can usually take your amplifier with you so you can hear exactly how each set of speakers sound with your power source. A retailer will also be more than happy to guide you on positioning your speakers, which cables to use and more.
But first, it’s a good idea to understand your available floorspace, which room you plan to install your new speakers in, and so on. Speakers need space around them to sound their best, so squeezing them behind a couch or in the corners of a room will deliver sub-par sound. If your floorspace is limited, you may want to consider on-wall or in-wall speakers instead, which can deliver great sound – even if they aren’t quite as powerful as a pair of floorstanders. Read more about the optimal design of your listening room here.
When it comes to size, floorstanding speakers don’t have to be imposing. DALI OBERON 5, for example, is a great sounding speaker yet stands only 83 cm tall. And at 16.2 cm wide, it’s a very slim floorstanding speaker, though it still packs enough of a low-end punch to reproduce an impressive performance for any music genre.
And if you’re looking for white floorstanding speakers, all DALI floorstanding speakers are available in satin and/or high-gloss white, as well as a range of other colours and finishes.
Wireless floorstanding speakers
Wireless floorstanding speakers give you all the performance of a traditional passive floorstander with the convenience of a cable-free setup. Our solution is called DALI EQUI, a zero-loss, stereo/surround streaming platform featuring wireless active speakers. With models like the OBERON 7 C and RUBICON 6 C, these high-performance speakers feature tailor-made, integrated Class-D power amplification driven wirelessly via the DALI SOUND HUB and SOUND HUB COMPACT preamplifiers.
The OBERON C series also contains a dedicated centre-channel speaker, which, when combined with the HDMI expansion module for the SOUND HUB, brings fully active, Hi-Fi quality wireless surround sound to reality.
Explore our complete range of wireless active speakers here.
Do I need a subwoofer with floorstanding speakers?
While large floorstanding Hi-Fi speakers are renowned for their powerful, extended bass, the truth is that almost any speaker can benefit from a subwoofer. DALI offers a broad range of subwoofers, all of which can enhance the bass performance of any loudspeaker they’re paired with. This doesn’t mean boomy, bloated bass, but more of what your stereo speakers are already good at: more punch, deeper frequencies and more convincing sound.
Of course, surround sound requires a subwoofer to really deliver the Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel information (that’s the ‘.1’ part of a 5.1 or 7.1 system). Add a subwoofer to a floorstander stereo setup, and you’ll add an extra dimension to your sound.
So, do you need a subwoofer with floorstanding speakers? Not necessarily but try it and we’re confident you’ll love what you hear.
FAQ
What is a floorstanding speaker?
A floorstanding speaker, also known as a tower speaker, is a large, freestanding speaker designed to provide a rich, full-range audio experience. It features multiple speaker drivers, including woofers, midrange and tweeters that, as a rule, combine to recreate a more nuanced, authentic and lifelike performance than a smaller compact or bookshelf speaker.
What are the advantages of floorstanding speakers?
Because of their larger internal volume and greater number of drivers, floorstanding speakers deliver a fuller, deeper sound than smaller bookshelf or compact speakers. Supplementing smaller speakers with a subwoofer can fill in the missing low-end frequencies but integrating these separate speakers may not produce the same coherent performance as a single-box floorstander solution.