advertisement


Ported or sealed box speakers. Which do you prefer?

Which do you prefer? Ported or sealed box speakers?

  • Ported

    Votes: 21 15.8%

  • Sealed box

    Votes: 58 43.6%

  • No Preference

    Votes: 54 40.6%
  • Total voters
    133
Owned some ATC SCM40's for 6 months... brilliant with electronic music, but sounded flat and lifeless with my preferred genres
been with Harbeth ever since.
Mac
 
A few years back I would have said sealed, but now I build my own speakers i've found out that ported done properly is better.
 
What about horn loading, aperiodic loading and panel speakers?! Some of my favourite speakers fit into those categories!
 
Have owned and built both types of speaker. Like others have said both can be great when the application is good.
 
Although logic dictates that large ported speakers (i.e. lower group delay in the audio band) should be fine and small ported speakers should be poor, my subjective impressions are generally the opposite.
Large ported speakers usually sound slow and overblown.
Small sealed boxes can sound anaemic.

Of course there are always exceptions (e.g. Kudos Titans and JR149s).
 
With my music and room I far prefer small sealed box speakers, that's not to say good ported speakers don't exist just that I don't like them.
 
It depends on the amp, for me.

With a Naim 72 250 pre power my preference would be for a sealed box that were more popular in the eighties. Monitor Audio R252 is an example. The tighter bass of the sealed box suits the fatter sound of that amp.

With a Yamaha like the A-S801 then a ported speaker like an MA RX2 suits the drier sound of that amp.
 
Minio said:
With a Naim 72 250 pre power ...... The tighter bass of the sealed box suits the fatter sound of that amp.
Click to expand...

Well, that's the first time I've read of 'fat' as an adjective describing Naim amplification; any, in fact. After a generation of Naim, incl. the 72 and 250 (up to 552/135) and with friends still on the penultimate Naim level, I'm surprised. Lots of adjectives, some quite derogatory, have been aimed at Naim kit, but never 'fat'o_O
 
George J said:
Box-less like the ESL is best. IMHO. Mind you the ESL has the advantage of not having the inertia of conventional cones as well.

All boxes resonate, whether ported or closed.

ATB from George
Click to expand...

I thought the resonance is supposed to be a good thing in BBC monitors.
 
I have no overall preference in general but I do have different preferences in my rooms which have a significant influence.

My mains speakers are ProAc D20R in a large(ish) lounge & the bass is significantly better than the D18's they replaced - there is plenty of space around them & soft furnishing. I considered keeping the D18's for my study but they sounded dreadful as they were in an enclosed space. For this room I have settled on Spendor A5R which are sealed & am experimenting with a sub-woofer with some improvement in deep bass but not perfect. My previous speakers were ported & they were ok at low volumes but boomy at higher volumes.
In my conservatory with hard floors & glass all around I also have another pair of Spendor A5R using a Quad 99 pre-amp which has a bass lift & that seems to add a touch of deep bass without getting boomy. The speakers are close to walls but the sound in this room has always been ok even with ported speakers.
At the other end of my lounge (with the ProAc D20R at one end) I have a pair of ProAc Tablette Anniversay which are rear ported with one speaker close to a wall but not square to it. This system is primarily for films for which I have a Castle Sub-woofer which is front firing (12") & they go together very well on both film & music, mainly blu-ray opera.

After 44 years since my first hi-fi system I am now content.
 
Tony L said:
What about horn loading, aperiodic loading and panel speakers?! Some of my favourite speakers fit into those categories!
Click to expand...
That'll be for another poll for another day.

For today I wanted to keep it to a simple poll.

BTW, thanks to everyone that voted in this poll.
 
Generally sealed is best.Nobody can explain away the problems with reverse phase coming out of the port and messing with what is coming out of the front of the driver.Having said that a well designed/tuned port in some rooms can sound OK but I think that is the exception rather than the rule.
Most speakers have poor quality bass and most speakers are ported.It has not helped that many people [especially younger people] seem to have a distorted idea of how good bass should sound and have grown up listening to electronic, excessive,fake and processed bass and have no reference for how natural bass should sound.
 
tuga said:
A port (as a TL) is a crutch which allows more extension and higher sensitivity from a smaller box at the expense of tonal discrimination and transient response and group delay.
It produces a resonance, like blowing across the mouth of a bottle, not really what you want for reproducing plucked strings or percussive sound from a piano or tympani.
It may not be objectionable if operating at a low enough frequency (≤30Hz).
Click to expand...

You do realise that plucked strings are being played on a ported instrument, right? And the fundamental of a drum is the resonant frequency, as is the notes played on piano strings etc?
 
Cesare said:
You do realise that plucked strings are being played on a ported instrument, right? And the fundamental of a drum is the resonant frequency, as is the notes played on piano strings etc?
Click to expand...
You don't realise that instruments produce sound whilst speakers (systems) reproduce recorded sound.
Perhaps a tweeter should be a whistle?
 
Timbre consists of other components appart from the fundamental tone:

  1. Range between tonal and noiselike character
  2. Spectral envelope
  3. Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release")
  4. Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation)
  5. Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre


Here the same note is played on a violin and on a viola:
xPyqx9W.png
 
Ayya Khema said:
it doesnt matter
the idea that ported is inferior to sealed due to timing is a myth
Click to expand...
I think this is true, from my limited experience anyway, as a generalization at least. However it seems to me that when a loudspeaker designer tries to "squeeze a quart out of a pint pot" then my ears hear undesirable effects and this is where ports seem to get the blame.

In particular I have come to avoid two issues I dislike: excessive ongoing bass note resonance after the notes should naturally have stopped; and too much distortion on peak (usually bass) music. I suspect that over-extending the bass frequency response to compensate for the natural limitations of the driver and its enclosure is (to wildly generalize) more to blame than the port per se. I have heard good (to my ears) loudspeakers with and without ports.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top