Ported or sealed box speakers. Which do you prefer?
- Thread starter lindsayt
- Start date
tuga
Legal Alien
Soundkeeper Recordings "Wind of Change" 24/96 sample, recorded w/ pair of Earthworks QTC-1 (this recording is a bit too sparkly/bright for my taste):
jtgofish
pfm Member
Electrostats come with their own set of compromises.I am yet to hear one that can reproduce a piano convincingly .They all seem to sound like somebody has shrink wrapped the strings .I have owned quite a few but always found this was a deal-breaker.That and the lack of dynamics.
Open baffle bass using say a couple of 15 inch highish Qts woofers can sound OK and avoid box problems but they have their problems too.
Open baffle bass using say a couple of 15 inch highish Qts woofers can sound OK and avoid box problems but they have their problems too.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
I have heard it on a few hard domes, testing with lowish level tones.
One had been pushed in and sucked back into shape, there must have been a weakness on the crease
Another had sticky ferrofluid
Others were cheap car tweeters
John Phillips
pfm Member
I brought a small storage crate full of familiar music to the half-day session. Including music that produced undesirable bass effects with my then loudspeakers - Proac D15s (about 20 litres internally with a 6.5-inch mid-woofer and a downward firing port).
The back story is that I had critically evaluated what I did not like about my D15s to guide my listening tests for their replacements. And I had created a priority list of things I wanted to get fixed. That included fixing what seemed to me to be poor bass transient behaviour.
I was aware of the memes associated with ported loudspeakers and started looking at sealed candidates. The comparison I made above was meaningful enough to tell me that in reality I didn't need to insist on a sealed loudspeaker to fix the "conventional wisdom" problems always associated with ported ones. I just had to find loudspeakers with better implemented ports if they had them.
Jonathan
pfm Member
A driver can produce low frequencies by having either a large cone surface area (in a large box) or a long-excursion suspension (in a smaller box).
If I'm not mistaken, and generally speaking, a small long-excursion woofer produces more harmonic distortion and more intermodulation distortion and compression at lower listening levels and is less sensitive.
The only reason for the existence of small long-woofers is the demand for small speakers. But you also need a big box to produce low frequencies hence the crutches (TL, bass-reflex) which have the welcome side effect of increasing sensitivity a little and easying the load.
My view is that sound should be produced by a driver and fitness for purpose is the key here: tiny tweeters, mid-sized squawkers and large woofers...and sub-woofers for sub-bass.
This image was taken from a vintage Kef user manual:
P.S.: dividing the spectrum over different dedicated drivers or ways reduces intermodulation distortion and ensures that each driver is operating within it's optimal range (avoiding nasty break-up resonances and the need for complex notch-filter with the bonus of a smoother off-axis response).
I'd say that the sweet-spot is a 3-way speaker though one would really need 4 ways (and a large) to accurately cover the whole 20Hz to 20kHz audible spectrum.
you talk almost as if cabinets don't exist ... i'd say the cabinet alone is the better part of any loudspeaker and responsible for much of what it does. The reason i like small drivers is for their coherence and speed - compared to their much larger muddy cousins
Fatmarley
"It appears my intelligence circuits have melted"
That's a myth.
Jonathan
pfm Member
well yeah - what on earth would MASS have to do with acceleration? PREPOSTEROUS! well it sure SOUNDS true to my ears ... but i'm a bit of a percussion freak - i would imagine if you're into bass guitar then 15 and 30 inch drivers would be the way to go
Tony L
Administrator
As I hear it a small driver moving a small distance is faster than a large driver moving a similarly small distance, but a large driver moving a small distance is far faster and less distorted than a small driver moving a large distance. What one never wants to see is a lot of driver travel as that equates to distortion, sluggishness, pitch aberration etc. As such it all relates to desired volume and listening distance.
PS This is especially the case in two-ways where the very last thing one wants is the crucial mid-band coming from a driver wildly bobbing in and out trying to do bass!
PS This is especially the case in two-ways where the very last thing one wants is the crucial mid-band coming from a driver wildly bobbing in and out trying to do bass!
Fatmarley
"It appears my intelligence circuits have melted"
You've missed an important bit out of your equation - The motor that drives the mass.
Bigger driver with more mass (MMS) plus a bigger motor (higher BL) - means it could be just as fast or faster.
No much different to a small car with low BHP against a heavier car with higher BHP.
tuga
Legal Alien
Most speakers nowadays are ported any way so it is the clever thing to do.
Going for larger boxes with larger woofers and port tuned to low frequency could minimise the problem but it as others have mentioned bass performance depends on many factors and ultimately it's down to implementation.
G
Guest432
Guest
On the normal sized standmount speakers I can always hear the port chuffing, haven't heard a pair yet that don't sound like a steam train.
On larger speakers not so much.
If I had to choose it would be closed box with the Audio Note AN-k or Snell K mk1 as the best sounding closed boxes I've heard.
On larger speakers not so much.
If I had to choose it would be closed box with the Audio Note AN-k or Snell K mk1 as the best sounding closed boxes I've heard.
jtgofish
pfm Member
Yes that has certainly been my experience.A short excursion high efficiency 15 or 18 inch woofer which does not attempt to go too low tends to produce the most precise and textured bass.Long excursion drivers have to sound slower and more smeared because it takes much longer for them to return to centre after a transient before they can reproduce the next transient.
cooky1257
pfm Member
Which do you prefer poorly implemented reflex loaded speakers or well implemented sealed?
If you've heard a ported speaker with obvious artefacts then it comes under 'poorly implemented'.
The extensive application/design choice for reflex loading in the reference/high end/studio monitoring fields by many manufacturers illustrates that they obviously know less than some absolutists posting here.FGS.
If out of necessity you were to supplement the low frequency performance of a sealed stand mount with a sub you will most certainly be introducing group delay(see link upthread) at the crossover points.
If you've heard a ported speaker with obvious artefacts then it comes under 'poorly implemented'.
The extensive application/design choice for reflex loading in the reference/high end/studio monitoring fields by many manufacturers illustrates that they obviously know less than some absolutists posting here.FGS.
If out of necessity you were to supplement the low frequency performance of a sealed stand mount with a sub you will most certainly be introducing group delay(see link upthread) at the crossover points.
Julf
Facts are our friends
So what you are saying is that they are being fed frequencies beyond the range they are capable at reproducing at the required volume.
cooky1257
pfm Member
They aren't in free fall on the return leg of a transient they are under control.