"Duke, some of us are not so enamored with the sound of most loudspeakers with ported bass." - Unsound
Me neither! But remember that unless you're outdoors you never hear the bass independent of the room. The bass of most ported-box speakers isn't voiced to synergize well with gain from boundary reinforcement. However if done right, I believe that a good ported box has qualitative advantages over a good sealed box... mainly because it can be more closely tailored to what's going on in the room.
"Duke , it does seem to me that you are discussing speakers designed for corner placement, if not how would this apply when speakers are setup and voiced away from the walls." - Weseixas
Corner placement would be the extreme example, but wouldn't it make sense to approximately match the speaker's inherent bass rolloff characteristics with its acoustic environment regardless of where it is? If the speaker is up on a stand out in the room away from walls, maybe even in an open-floorplan home, then you're going to need a great deal more bass energy from the speaker in order to get acceptable tonal balance. In this scenario we'd shorten the ports and raise the tuning frequency, and once again a ported box gives us options that a sealed box does not.
I don't know why more manufacturers don't incorporate user-adjustable ports. Most of my customers have ended up happiest with a tuning frequency different from the one I shipped the speakers with. One customer is even tuning the two speakers differently based on where they're located (one's in a corner, the other isn't). I use Precision Ports, available from Parts Express and Madisound and probably others, in case anyone wants to retrofit them to their speakers. They screw into the cabinet so they can be removed, and I just use a few wraps of electrical tape to secure the sections together.
Duke
