To really answer that question one would have to hear two speakers with identical internal cabinet volumes, cross overs, and driver compliments; one set in a tower shaped box and one set in a bookshelf type box. It's pretty much unanswerable. There are so many factors that are 10 times more important to sound it's nearly irrelevant. It's a bit like asking if where the cup holders are in a car affects the handling. Maybe a little but it would be hard to measure and the effect would be so slight it wouldn't be worth the time. I'm not trying to be rude, just honest. The only way that that criteria would come into a speaker purchasing decision would be for ascetic reasons or space reasons.

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Could some one tell me what are the differences in sonic charecteristics of a box type speaker (eg. the Harbeths and Spendor Classics) vs more commonly found tower type floor standing speakers and why?

Since Jamo released there C803, not much! As to why, that's such a complex area with so many different answers, depending on the particular technology used in different designs, it would take an entire book to answer. There are only two fairly consistent aspects that differentiate most ( not all) stand mount speakers from floor standers. The smaller devices lack the bottom end performance of larger speakers and smaller speakers often have better stereo definition and instrument placement. Buy hey, there are now so many exceptions to that rule it's almost not a rule anymore.

I wouldn't just assume vented systems have resolved all of their flaws simply because they are what the market favors at this moment in time. There are still significant problems and laws of physics to deal with whenever you allow the rear wave of a driver to exist out of phase with the front wave and in the same listening space. Vented designs have become far more predictable in their low frequency response than had been possible just a decade ago and this has provided designers with a great advantage over the old "cut it and try" style of bass reflex system design. One clear advantage of a vented design is its higher sensitivity (SPL's) with a similar driver compliment and somewhat deeper bass extension for any enclosure size using a similar low frequency driver. This is in contrast to the days of AR and Advent when small, sealed enclosures offered deeper bass extension when compared to the large vented boxes of previous days while at the expense of a few dB of sensitivity. This added volume capacity found in modern bass reflex designs provides a healhty boost when the speaker is used in a home theatre system, particularly when that speaker is reinforced by a subwoofer to compensate for its fast bass frequency rollout once it reaches system resonance.

However, another type of "vented" system would be a transmission line system which by its nature does not share the same high sensitivity found in the more common bass reflex system. So not all ported systems are created equal.

But all of audio is a trade off of one sort or another. A designer chooses to build a vented, sealed, restricted terminus, open baffle, infinite baffle, transmission line or dipole/bipole system for specific reasons that have to do with one enclosure type offering the largest group of advantages over the least number of trade offs.

Similarly, I would not pay much attention to anyone who tells you "this" is the "best" way to build anything. Everything has a series of advantages and a group of disadvantages and it is not all that uncommon to find one advantage trading off against two disadvantages if the designer feels one system's significant advantages outweigh the other's lesser trade offs.

If you would care to learn more about how encosure volume and shape affect the performance of a speaker system, you might want to do some research on your own since this is a topic that has far too many related issues to cover in one thread. Build material influences the enclosure as much as enclosure size and shape and you would want to know about how building a thin walled enclosure results in a different final product than building with a massive and highly rigid material. How dispersion, diffraction and "baffle step" issues are dealt with would be another topic to study since these can have a dramatic effect on a modern speaker system.

For the most part the woofer will determine the enclosure volume - or the other way around. But the two are linked and a driver that operates to a specific frequency in a sealed enclosure might not ideally be suited for use in a vented enclosure. You might find it interesting to get on a few of the DIY sites to find out just how various designers decide which comes first, the enclosure type or the driver they wish to use as one determines the other. Or a designer might want to experiment with a certain "Q" for a speaker's response and start from there fitting driver and enclosure into that concept. Obviously, there are numerous ways to go about speaker design. Speaker lines such as Audio Note favor a wide baffle while Spendor typically builds with a narrow front baffle. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Place "DIY loudspeaker" in a search engine to start this research.

Finally, you might care to look at a few of the lines such as Spendor who build with identical drivers but employ different enclosures. Typically at some point in the line this involves the same midrange/woofer and tweeter being used in a compact enclosure and then the addition of another similar low frequency driver in a larger enclosure. This sort of system has become known as a 2.5 way system. If you cruise through the Stereophile archives you'll find several reviews of such designs and you can get a feel for what technical information JA reports in his "Measurements" section and the subjective response of the reviewer to this sort of compromise.

In essence, "bookshelf" or "box" speakers are speakers that are usually 2-way speakers that make no serious attempt to reproduce true bass; they have little output below 80 HZ in any room bigger than 4m square (they may SAY they go down to 50 or 60 HZ, but they cannot supply enough power at those frequencies for most rooms).

Floor-standing speakers are almost always 2 speakers in one box; one section for the highs and midrange within the box and a separate enclosure for the bass drivers within the same box.

To my way of thinking, it may actually be better to just go with small speakers and add a good low-frequency unit for the bass (usually called a subwoofer, but this really is a misnomer, since most of them will operate from 80 HZ on down quite nicely).

The bass section of most medium and large floor-standing loudspeakers will not really deliver enough bass to fully serve most music anyway, and you end up needing a subwoofer anyway, so why not just buy good small speakers to operate above 80 HZ, and let the sub do the rest?

If I was starting from scratch, I would go that route.

The main advantage of a floorstander is that the increased internal volume can be used to either extend the bass or improve the efficiency or both. For example, my current speakers, Audio Kinesis Jazz Modules have roughly four cubic feet internal volume. In comparison, a stand-mount of one cubic foot internal volume would either have 2/3 octave less bass, or 6 dB lower efficiency, or some combination thereof.

If we're comparing equal-dollar speakers, the more expensive box and greater shipping costs work against the floorstander such that an equal-dollar standmount will probably have better quality drivers and/or better crossover parts. But the efficiency/bass extension advantage of the bigger box remains.

The Large Advent loudspeaker had a measured frequency response of 33 Hz - 17 KHz +/- 3dB, one of the of the most elegant designs ever created. About 26" high, 14" wide, and 12" deep.

I think a lot of manufacturers make tower type speakers because you will get a larger enclosure with a small footprint. A greater volume for cabinet size usually means better bass. That also allows many of the tower types to have woofers mounted on the side (bigger woofer than the front panel). Spousal acceptance factor may be of significance also. Plus, better bass out of the same footprint is a good thing.