Thank you for the reply!
Actually, you just gave me a much better answer than I was hoping for.
Because, you just told me all about why the large sealed box will not work for me at all, as I suspected it might not.
Unfortunately, I have two possible situations I might be in. One is to build out my small but serviceable basement. Right now, that plan looks something like this (clickable thumbnail):
(EDIT: I just realized that the dimensions aren't really visible in that image. My basement is 13' by 17' by 6.5'.)
If I can get the basement, I can build soffits for the monitors to sit in, which would be ideal.
If I end up stuck using my bedroom, which is smaller (though a higher ceiling), I won't be able to have either soffit walls or a drum set (that last one is the one that irritates me the most about the whole situation). Unfortunately, the room is too small for any standalone speakers to be able to sit three feet or however much out into the room as well. That leaves me with one option: build a set specifically designed to hang on the wall.
(Just as an aside, the basement leaks water, and it's going to be a real chore to fix that, because it means digging outside the house to re-do the backfill. I really don't think that's going to happen, which means trying to seal from the inside, which is at best a temporary solution. I swear if I ever get my hands on the so-called contractor who "re-modeled" it...)
One of my other problems, getting back to speakers themselves, is that I've only very recently started paying attention to how various speakers I like the sound of are designed, but in the end, I can tell you the best ones I've heard are relatively small ported boxes. Usually, they're back-ported, which wouldn't work well for either soffit- or wall-mounting.
As for my requirements, well, I'm a prog-rock guy, so 40-20K would be fine. I'm an IT guy, so I'm considering doing the crossover in DSP with a dedicated computer system, which I've researched a lot of in the past few weeks. Regardless of what room I get, they are both small, so any drivers beyond 8" in size would likely be pointless. My budget? That's up in the air at the moment, as I want to know what to aim for. A computer crossover set-up will likely be about $800 or so for a computer and decent sound card right there (yes, I know people will say I need $1000 just for the sound card, but that part of the system is upgradeable quite easily). Add in the drivers, and I'm looking at $1200 or so I think. MDF is cheap, so I'm not really counting that. Of course, there's always active crossovers if the computer option doesn't pan out.
That was probably more ranting than real information, but there you go.
Again, thank you for the reply.