Ported or sealed box speakers. Which do you prefer?

[tuga]

Firstly B&W are very much a home audio company not a studio one whatever their marketing might imply. Secondly studios spend large sums of money to get genuinely higher sound quality to the extent of designing and building the walls of the room. What are the chances they are happy to accept lower clarity and resolution? They tend to opt for what is appropriate to maximise genuine sound quality rather than perceived/marketed sound quality.

Looking to see what the (real) professionals do can be wise when seeking guidance about the relative importance of marketed features. You can be pretty sure sales patter will be strongly distorted in favour of the features contained in a product particularly when the target audience, unlike (real) professionals, are not technically literate and hence a lot easier to steer.

Can you define "real" professional?

If you mean those who are making high quality work (recording and mastering), how many are they?

 

[ToTo Man]

I've often wondered about the reasoning behind Abbey Road's monitoring system. Not the type of speaker or placement I'd usually associate with a mixing/mastering suite.

It seems like one big love fest for B&W:
https://www.abbeyroad.com/bowers-wilkins

 

[Tony L]

I've often wondered about the reasoning behind Abbey Road's monitoring system. Not the type of speaker or placement I'd usually associate with a mixing/mastering suite.

A marketing opportunity IMHO. I’d be far, far beyond astonished if B&W and Classe (the amps driving them) didn’t pay quite a few quid to get their kit in that room, I’ d bet Abbey Rd won’t have paid a penny for any of it. There is a lot of cable marketing going on too.

To my eyes the setup looks crazy, I’d far prefer proper studio monitors located in the places one puts proper studio monitors. I’d also want the contrast from full-range to nearfield to be available as you learn so much about a mix when swapping between replay kit types. It is exceptionally hard/impossible to mix on high-end full-range speakers alone as one tends to end up with bass one can’t hear at all on NS10s, in the car, on the radio etc!

 

[h.g.]

Can you define "real" professional?

People that are employed to work with sound and are technically literate about sound or work closely with those that are and defer to them on technical matters.

Prior to the mid 70s there wasn't much of a distinction between top of the range home audio equipment and professional equipment. In many cases the latter was simply a more physically robust version of the former with handles on. This was because both largely sought high technical sound quality. After the stereo boom the market for home audio suffered badly: it was increasingly becoming a replacement market, new activities like PCs started to reduce both the budget and interest in home audio by the general public, technical sound quality was becoming less of a distinguishing feature as evolution raised the performance of cheaper hardware and the developed world was increasingly unable to produce low-tech hardware at competitive prices both because of high wages and inflation putting off investment in new factories. This battering of demand and interest happened to home audio not professional audio.

The response was to build those new factories in lower cost developing countries for the cheaper home audio hardware and to shift the emphasis from technical performance towards a marketed performance for the higher cost home audio hardware. This was smart and companies like Naim and Linn that embraced it prospered while pretty much all our established UK home audio companies hanging onto to technical performance and trying to keep going by moving upmarket disappeared as independent UK companies although many of the brands survive today as part of international companies.

The shift from technical performance to marketed performance required this new "high end"/"audiophile" industry to split from the professional industry, academic and mainstream press and form an isolated, self referential world of press, shops and shows. It also shed most technically literate people that were not prepared to go along with the marketing/deception. I was one and so increasingly were my peers. It seems remarkable that someone involved with the technical side of sound and acoustics as part of the day job could be completely unaware of the development of audiophile nonsense from it's position in the late 70s until the mid 00s when I stepped back into the home audio world. In truth it was starting to leak out a bit into the mainstream with some audiophile products starting to appear in department stores as technical knowledge increasingly lost favour with the general public in preference to marketing leading to the ludicrous nonsense in parliament today.

The reason for "real" professional is that the proaudio side is also becoming significantly more audiophile among the technically illiterate particularly those that look to the web rather than academic and technical sources for their information. This character for example. In the older larger established studios there tends to be technically literate people about and people that have been formally educated via tonmeister-type courses are more likely to end up in this type of environment. Enthusiastic youngsters in their bedrooms creating music however are open to all sorts of steering.

 

[Julf]

The shift from technical performance to marketed performance required this new "high end"/"audiophile" industry to split from the professional industry, academic and mainstream press and form an isolated, self referential world of press, shops and shows. It also shed most technically literate people that were not prepared to go along with the marketing/deception. I was one and so increasingly were my peers. It seems remarkable that someone involved with the technical side of sound and acoustics as part of the day job could be completely unaware of the development of audiophile nonsense from it's position in the late 70s until the mid 00s when I stepped back into the home audio world.

Hear hear! Very much reflects my own experiences as well.

 

[wainwj]

Short answer: Sealed
Much longer answer: Completely agree with what he said above. Despite having reservations as to whether it answers this particular question.

 

[Tony L]

People that are employed to work with sound and are technically literate about sound or work closely with those that are and defer to them on technical matters.

Prior to the mid 70s there wasn't much of a distinction between top of the range home audio equipment and professional equipment. In many cases the latter was simply a more physically robust version of the former with handles on. This was because both largely sought high technical sound quality. After the stereo boom the market for home audio suffered badly: it was increasingly becoming a replacement market, new activities like PCs started to reduce both the budget and interest in home audio by the general public, technical sound quality was becoming less of a distinguishing feature as evolution raised the performance of cheaper hardware and the developed world was increasingly unable to produce low-tech hardware at competitive prices both because of high wages and inflation putting off investment in new factories. This battering of demand and interest happened to home audio not professional audio.

The response was to build those new factories in lower cost developing countries for the cheaper home audio hardware and to shift the emphasis from technical performance towards a marketed performance for the higher cost home audio hardware. This was smart and companies like Naim and Linn that embraced it prospered while pretty much all our established UK home audio companies hanging onto to technical performance and trying to keep going by moving upmarket disappeared as independent UK companies although many of the brands survive today as part of international companies.

The shift from technical performance to marketed performance required this new "high end"/"audiophile" industry to split from the professional industry, academic and mainstream press and form an isolated, self referential world of press, shops and shows. It also shed most technically literate people that were not prepared to go along with the marketing/deception. I was one and so increasingly were my peers. It seems remarkable that someone involved with the technical side of sound and acoustics as part of the day job could be completely unaware of the development of audiophile nonsense from it's position in the late 70s until the mid 00s when I stepped back into the home audio world. In truth it was starting to leak out a bit into the mainstream with some audiophile products starting to appear in department stores as technical knowledge increasingly lost favour with the general public in preference to marketing leading to the ludicrous nonsense in parliament today.

The reason for "real" professional is that the proaudio side is also becoming significantly more audiophile among the technically illiterate particularly those that look to the web rather than academic and technical sources for their information. This character for example. In the older larger established studios there tends to be technically literate people about and people that have been formally educated via tonmeister-type courses are more likely to end up in this type of environment. Enthusiastic youngsters in their bedrooms creating music however are open to all sorts of steering.

I think you miss the simply huge decline in the pro studio arena. For every Abbey Rd you’ll find 100+ studios that have closed their doors due to the fact you can do most of what you need with a couple of mics, a USB audio interface, a Mac running Logic and a pair of £400 active monitors in your bedroom. It simply isn’t the same marketplace it was back in the 1980s and earlier. Even the likes of Tannoy, probably the biggest name in studio monitoring history, no longer make a proper full-range studio monitor as there are simply no studios left to buy them! They have thankfully just started making dual concentric monitors again, but they are small to mid-sized and clearly aimed at small project studios, bedrooms etc.

 

[h.g.]

I think you miss the simply huge decline in the pro studio arena. For every Abbey Rd you’ll find 100+ studios that have closed their doors due to the fact you can do most of what you need with a couple of mics, a USB audio interface, a Mac running Logic and a pair of £400 active monitors in your bedroom. It simply isn’t the same marketplace it was back in the 1980s and earlier. Even the likes of Tannoy, probably the biggest name in studio monitoring history, no longer make a proper full-range studio monitor as there are simply no studios left to buy them! They have thankfully just started making dual concentric monitors again, but they are small to mid-sized and clearly aimed at small project studios, bedrooms etc.

I agree with what you say but the digital recording revolution and the home audio "audiophile" revolution are quite different things and separated by well over a decade in time. The former lead to the creation of the "prosumer" audio sector which is where the highest technical performance for minimum cost can usually be found today if one can cope with the visuals. It is weird how we now have two largely independent sectors that provide a lot of the same technical function. The "high end"/"audiophile" parts of the two are merging to a fair extent though around DACs, headphones, record players, tape recorders,... The audiophile deception doesn't seem to be dying off with the increasingly aged home audio audiophiles. It is noticeably diluting though as the more extreme audiophile products such as stones in jars, cables costing >£10k, cable lifters, green marker pens, belt products, etc... lose traction.

Interesting stuff but drifting away from ported or sealed boxes.

 

[cooky1257]

Thanks for the link.


But this brings me back to when BnW replace the sealed bass bin of the 801F with the ported one on the Matrix because studios wanted louder (easier driveability, lower distortion at high SPL). Apparently they gave less importance to transient response (clarity, resolution)...

As I mentioned in my first post, my listening experience is that the port is tuned to around or below 30Hz in large speakers with large woofers is fine (i.e. TAD R1). Probably because there isn't much happening musically in this range, mostly ambience information.

Reconcile those 2 statements....the latter is correct thus making the former daft.

 

[AndyU]

I agree with what you say but the digital recording revolution and the home audio "audiophile" revolution are quite different things and separated by well over a decade in time. The former lead to the creation of the "prosumer" audio sector which is where the highest technical performance for minimum cost can usually be found today if one can cope with the visuals. It is weird how we now have two largely independent sectors that provide a lot of the same technical function. The "high end"/"audiophile" parts of the two are merging to a fair extent though around DACs, headphones, record players, tape recorders,... The audiophile deception doesn't seem to be dying off with the increasingly aged home audio audiophiles. It is noticeably diluting though as the more extreme audiophile products such as stones in jars, cables costing >£10k, cable lifters, green marker pens, belt products, etc... lose traction.

Interesting stuff but drifting away from ported or sealed boxes.

h.g. - what speakers do you rate? What do you use yourself, or recommend?

 

[davidsrsb]

The most expensive speakers tend to be some of the furthest from neutral. Stereophile used to note this and warn readers to audition them.

 

[Yomanze]

Ported speakers get a bad rap because they are often tuned too high. 40Hz or 50Hz is just asking for chuffing artefacts and phase distortion. They have a weird sensation of the bass not “hitting” you at the same time as the rest of the tune, and then overhangs when it does, also timbre is lost (one note bass).

My Royd RR3s are tuned to 30Hz and sound remarkably unlike a bass reflex speaker. It has a piece of flexible conduit jnside, tuned to the cabinet, connected to the port. Known as ‘compound reflex loading’.

Some transmission lines can be made to sound very fast and cohesive indeed, some sealed boxes can be ploddy and mushy in the bass, no hard rules, just harder to get ported right in small speakers.

 

[h.g.]

h.g. - what speakers do you rate?

I am an engineer interested in speakers and rate those that meet their objectives well. This is measured to a fair extent by how well they sell which can leave one a bit baffled at times trying to work out quite what features are responsible. I expect this lack of emotional connection with the hardware is rather different to most here and, indeed, myself in my teenage years.

What do you use yourself, or recommend?

I have recently moved into a house that needs a lot of work (trying to avoid ripping out the walls and floors but it is close) and has a much smaller and poorly shaped living room compared to the previous one. I currently have my old kitchen speakers, 6.5" ported 2 way KEF Qsomething coaxials, on temporary stands made from boxes of drivers in the living room. There are more boxes of drivers and amplifiers in a corner and sheets of birch ply in the garage (leaking roof in dire need of replacement hence the boxes of bits in the house). The sound quality is above what would intrude significantly on enjoying music but until I have sorted the room and the most pressing issues with the rest of the house building a set of speakers for the living room will have to wait. As will the speakers for the kitchen, study and workshop/garage.

For those that have the time and are interested in technical sound quality I would recommend DIY speakers. Otherwise I would recommend getting a handle on what interests you about speakers and following it.

On the topic of the thread, the speakers in the living room will be mainly sealed because of size constraints due to the use of a significant number of subs to control the room response of a fairly small room. Those in the kitchen are likely to be ported 2 ways because of cost constraint and music rarely being a foreground activity there. I am pondering though what might be achievable with a pair in the corners above the cupboards at one end. I have a design for desktop transmission lines speakers in the study which would be fun but prudence may win out with a sealed plus sub arrangement. The garage speakers will initially be whatever is left over like the KEF coaxials but the longer term aim is large cheapish, easy to drive, high efficiency "party" speakers that could also be used occasionally at gatherings. These will be ported.

 

[matt j]

A marketing opportunity IMHO. I’d be far, far beyond astonished if B&W and Classe (the amps driving them) didn’t pay quite a few quid to get their kit in that room, I’ d bet Abbey Rd won’t have paid a penny for any of it. There is a lot of cable marketing going on too.

To my eyes the setup looks crazy, I’d far prefer proper studio monitors located in the places one puts proper studio monitors. I’d also want the contrast from full-range to nearfield to be available as you learn so much about a mix when swapping between replay kit types. It is exceptionally hard/impossible to mix on high-end full-range speakers alone as one tends to end up with bass one can’t hear at all on NS10s, in the car, on the radio etc!

Maybe it's all a marketing thing full stop just for the pictures, and they wheel in the proper stuff when doing actual mixing.

 

[John Phillips]

Ported speakers get a bad rap because they are often tuned too high. 40Hz or 50Hz is just asking for chuffing artefacts and phase distortion. They have a weird sensation of the bass not “hitting” you at the same time as the rest of the tune, and then overhangs when it does, also timbre is lost (one note bass).

That correspond to my personal experience.

In discussions it's not often considered that particular undesirable port effects may occur at or below the port tuning frequency. So if I understand the technology correctly a bass reflex enclosure with port tuning frequency below which there's limited amounts of real music (for a given musical taste) is likely to resemble a similar sealed enclosure but with lower distortion.

My Royd RR3s are tuned to 30Hz and sound remarkably unlike a bass reflex speaker. It has a piece of flexible conduit jnside, tuned to the cabinet, connected to the port. Known as ‘compound reflex loading’.

For my tastes 30 Hz and below is a rule of thumb I agree with. The very bottom note on a standard grand piano is 27.5 Hz. Below that there is ambience which I guess doesn't suffer with increasing group delay. FYI my loudspeakers have ports that seem to be tuned somewhere around 23 Hz.

If the port in a bass reflex design has to be tuned above 30 Hz then my experience for my own musical tastes is that I need to find an equivalent sealed design.

 

[tuga]

I am an engineer interested in speakers and rate those that meet their objectives well. This is measured to a fair extent by how well they sell which can leave one a bit baffled at times trying to work out quite what features are responsible. I expect this lack of emotional connection with the hardware is rather different to most here and, indeed, myself in my teenage years.

This in my view is a very important point.
I like to describe my stereo as a tool, like a screwdriver, a potato-peeler or a hairdryer. I don't have any emotional attachment to any of it and I give very limited importance to looks. I want my system to reproduce the recorded signal as accurately as possible for a given budget.

I've stopped reading reviews more than a decade ago, after having gone off the beaten track, jumped on the Tripath bandwagon, owned a NOS DAC, tried two pairs of single driver speakers, lived with a chip-amp, bought a turntable, mostly thanks to our friends the 6loons...
Wasted time and money. Learned my lesson the hard way.

Magazines exist to stimulate consumption and audio magazines are no different. Most reviews are little more than "personalised" advertising, like teleshopping, and there's little in the way of technical information/education. Measurements are not compulsory.
Audiophiles have themselves to blame for this. We're lazy buggers which would rather believe the "critics" and our own ears than learn a bit about the how's and why's, about the facts. We like the mystery and the snake oil, and this only makes us an easier prey...
But magazines own their share of fault as well for (perhaps somewhat understandably - see below) not standing up to the manufacturers.
There's this rather promiscuous relationship between magazines/"critics" and manufacturers, one which involves advertising (magazines don't live off subscriptions), extended loans, accommodating prices and unwritten rules (negative feedback means adverts are gone, no access to test samples and maybe even threats of legal action). You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
I also suspect that magazines/"critics" are the ones responsible for the exponential inflation of equipment and accessories' prices and for overemphasising the importance of accessories (i.e. cables).

Forums also play a major role in stimulating consumption, but at least there is space for dialogue, for a wider array of opinions, and people will often call things out for what they really are.

 

[h.g.]

I agree with much of the above but would lean myself towards a more tolerant view.

In the 70s the home audio press opted to swap sides from an emphasis on the interests of the consumer to that of the industry by supporting the audiophile deception. The alternative was almost certainly no job for most. As it was many had to reveal that rather than being lifelong home audio enthusiasts they were actually lifelong PC enthusiasts, camera enthusiasts, motorbike enthusiasts, or whatever. I am afraid that we as consumers are simply not prepared to pay significant sums of money in large numbers to support genuinely independent and informed advice about luxury consumer goods. If we were there are plenty of technically literate people and accessible measurement and lab facilities willing and able to provide this information as they already do for industry.

Unlike electronics there is no single correct output from a speaker for a given input when it comes to music in the home. There are a range of neutral(ish) responses but which is optimum varies with the form and level of reflections in the recordings, the form and level of reflections from the room and user preference in the broad area of exchanging a sense of spaciousness for a sense of source location. There are also a range of deviations from maximising neutrality that can sound attractive in enhancing things like a sense of detail, a sense of spaciousness, image precision, an absence of harshness, etc... It seems valid to me to exchange maximising neutrality for a more characterful sound in the home if that is the user's preference. Or more useful in the studio where high clarity helps with the job.

Home stereo systems are luxury goods and technical performance is only one aspect of what brings value to luxury goods. Perceived performance among peers can be a lot more important for example. Messing about with audio hardware is a hobby interest for most and, again, technical performance is only one aspect of what makes a hobby fun.

 

[Julf]

people will often call things out for what they really are.

Until told to stop, or blocked...

 

[John Phillips]

I agree with much of the above but would lean myself towards a more tolerant view.

In the 70s the home audio press opted to swap sides from an emphasis on the interests of the consumer to that of the industry …

Tolerance yes, but combined with awareness. Ideally (IMHO) people should ask themselves about why, in their version of the hobby, they consume audio media, shows, blogs, forums etc. and what they get out of doing so.

I consume some of these sources and from my PoV it's for elements of information and elements of entertainment. The balance varies from source to source and I make my own judgements about the quality of both. But over the years it seems to me that entertainment content and didacticism has become dominant over information content and consumer service. And I agree that the information content seems to have become more selective and more supportive of the industry.

As I have written before, I would no more buy a piece of equipment based on the recommendation of a blogger, reviewer or pundit today than I would buy a car based on what Jeremy Clarkson says.

 

[tuga]

Tolerance yes, but combined with awareness. Ideally (IMHO) people should ask themselves about why, in their version of the hobby, they consume audio media, shows, blogs, forums etc. and what they get out of doing so.

I consume some of these sources and from my PoV it's for elements of information and elements of entertainment. The balance varies from source to source and I make my own judgements about the quality of both. But over the years it seems to me that entertainment content and didacticism has become dominant over information content and consumer service. And I agree that the information content seems to have become more selective and more supportive of the industry.

As I have written before, I would no more buy a piece of equipment based on the recommendation of a blogger, reviewer or pundit today than I would buy a car based on what Jeremy Clarkson says.

Reviewing has also become an ego thing, at least judging from some of the narcissist videos published by Stereophile, the pinnacle of which may very well be a renowned vinyl "eggspurt"...