What do you have to drive the speakers with now? Or are looking at? A lot of 2ch gear has no bass management, but avrs do have bass management....
I personally prefer a sub even with floorstanders, even with an f3 of 37hz as the Emotiva T1 specs indicate (and how capable are they for higher spl in the low end?), as I want deep bass capabilities even just for music (and I like movies too) so either much larger and more capable floorstanders or simply support the speakers with subs.
I'm listening to some Tool now both in plain 2.0 and then in various modes with subs and surrounds....much prefer the support of subs, and my towers have a similar low end capability to the T1. I also listen to a lot of bass heavy music otherwise and wouldn't consider no subs unless maybe I had JTR 215RTs or something.
my current setup is a Yamaha rx-v375 with cerwin vega vs120s and a polk audio psw10 sub. I'm looking for something more accurate and cleaner than the Yamaha. the cerwin vega speakers are ok but they really need a high current amp with atleast 300wpc to reach their full potential. and why would I invest in that when I can get a new set up that sounds more detailed and cleaner than my current one. if I were to get a bookshelf and sub set up it would be with emotiva b1s and a svs sb12nsd. Ive been doing research and most sources say that ht receivers wont sound as good for music as a strict 2 channel setup will. If that's not the case, id still have to look for a new receiver since my Yamaha does not have bass management.
Ask
@Pogre if he thinks Tool is better supported by subs and speakers....