Well engineered ported designs as good as sealed designs IMHO.
Each has its tradeoffs -
Sealed boxes have issues mores on an issue with standing internal standing waves being feedback to the speaker cones. Ported designs exhibit other possible (arguably) tradeoffs. Ive heard designs of both schools that sound excellent. All rooms exhibit modes they just occur at differ frequencies (they all will fall into the subwoofer range). Different speaker drivers end to work better in different designs depending on several factors. A major one is the Q of a driver. The bottom line is that the driver needs to match the box design. One is not necessarily better than the other. Room modes and reflections also occur at all other audible frequencies. There are quite a few places on the WWW that will explain how to calculate them.
Each has its tradeoffs -
Sealed boxes have issues mores on an issue with standing internal standing waves being feedback to the speaker cones. Ported designs exhibit other possible (arguably) tradeoffs. Ive heard designs of both schools that sound excellent. All rooms exhibit modes they just occur at differ frequencies (they all will fall into the subwoofer range). Different speaker drivers end to work better in different designs depending on several factors. A major one is the Q of a driver. The bottom line is that the driver needs to match the box design. One is not necessarily better than the other. Room modes and reflections also occur at all other audible frequencies. There are quite a few places on the WWW that will explain how to calculate them.