A speaker of a small size, usually under 18 to 24 inches in height, which is best suited to sitting on some sort of stand be it a bookshelf, table, speaker stand or other object. Bookshelf speakers were designed primarily for their ease of placement in a room and aesthetic quality (they are small and do not take up too much space compared to their larger floorstanding siblings). These speakers are designed to be set on top of something and should not be placed directly on the floor. For the most part, bookshelf speakers tend to be two-way speakers lacking extreme low frequency extension. lso know as satellite speakers, bookshelf speakers are best used when joined with a subwoofer. The subwoofer can take over the low frequency tasks and leave the midrange and higher frequencies to the bookshelf speaker. With this type of design you can achieve a high-quality sound system with all the output and sound quality of full-range speakers (and sometimes better output since most good-quality subwoofers are able to produce more and better bass output than typical full-range speakers).