Sealed vs Ported Loudspeakers: Which is Better?

[admin]

Sealed vs ported loudspeakers, which one is better? This is an age-old question one which sparks debates not only among consumers but designers themselves. There are certainly points on each side of the argument to consider. The debate of ported vs. sealed is intrinsically relevant and interesting, regardless of the arbitrary brand involved. This article provides a historical perspective on the genesis of the sealed loudspeaker design and how it compares with conventional ported designs.


Discuss "Sealed vs Ported Loudspeakers: Which is Better?" here. Read the article.

[Irvrobinson]

It looks like it will be a great article, but I got an error trying to access the second page.

[slipperybidness]

waaaaait for it.......waaaaait for it

[3db]

Ported or sealed.. who cares? As long as they sound good is all that matters to me.

[gene]

It looks like it will be a great article, but I got an error trying to access the second page.

It should be working now.

here is page2:
Measuring Ported Speakers — Reviews and News from Audioholics

[j_garcia]

Ported or sealed.. who cares? As long as they sound good is all that matters to me.

I'm sort of in the same boat and the article sort of suggests the same It really depends on the speaker as a whole, as the article also mentions in the closing comment

But I have heard terrific (and lousy!) systems of all types, so I'm willing to believe that it's more a matter of the designer's goals and their skill at execution that makes the difference, rather than any arbitrary design approach.

It does come down to what the designer was after and their preferences. A given designer's "style" may not be pleasing to everyone's ears regardless of how they may measure.

I also thought the comment about "they don't HAVE to be bad..." definitely hits hard at something completely different than where the article was going. There seems to be a fairly large gap in home audio these days. Where previously, almost everyone had a "decent" stereo system and the tweakers (Audioholics) still had their nice systems, today, I don't know too many people that have really nice systems and a LOT of people who just bought a basic system because their TV speakers sucked. If the general consumer doesn't demand better speakers, then the focus won't be on making better speakers in general. There will always be Audioholics, but we don't dominate the market.

[Irvrobinson]

Nice article.

For years I thought sealed speakers had better bass, he says now owning absolutely fantastic ported speakers. I genuinely thought the sealed alignment sounded better overall, though now I'm thinking it's more the quality of the execution than whether it is sealed or not. I still remember hearing the Dunlavy SC-V for the first time (a sealed system) and thinking, wow, now that's awesome bass! I was also very fond of my ADS towers.

Nonetheless, the best bass *quality* I've heard is from speakers with no bass enclosure, like the Linkwitz Orion, the Carver Amazing, and the Sound Labs U-1PX. I'm often less than satisfied with the sheer level of bass output of these designs, but the bass sounds much more natural than from any enclosed bass system I've ever heard.

[slipperybidness]

I would have liked to see some info on passive radiators included too. Perhaps in a followup.

[TLS Guy]

This is an age old topic, but remains an important one.

The other day in response to a members question on the advantage of an 18" driver over a 15" driver, I found I could not properly put together an answer without giving my thought on loudspeaker design and bass extension.

I would make the following additional observations.

I think total system Q has a large and almost overwhelming influence on the character of the bass in a system.

As I stated in my post I feel the total Q of the vast majority of designs before the public have total Q too high, and are incapable of really accurate "you are there" lower octave reproduction.

Every time I leave a good concert as I did last Saturday night I become even more convinced that optimal total Q 0.7 is too high and not accurate.

So how did this desired total Q of 0.7 come about? I think it his historic, as the importance of proper BSC was not understood, and mid range accuracy was much more elusive than it is now. The added warmth of the inherent resonant reproduction of total Q 0.7 and even higher, covered a multitude of sins.

As time passes I become more and more convinced, that to achieve that precise "sitting at the edge of the chair" excitement of live performance requires critically damped bass alignments. The rest just come up short.

I often ear it said, that low Q systems are all very well for orchestral, chamber and instrumental music, but what about music in the popular domain?

I designed this system to please me primarily and no one else, and reproduction of of music from the pop culture was not even on my radar.

However, mix engineers seem to be prepared to make the long journey to Benedict to check mixes and grade student projects. The reason given is bass detail and accuracy and the ability to hear what they can't on other speakers. So this has led me to believe that all genres of music benefit from critically damped speaker systems.

I have some further comments on this debate. Sealed, infinite baffle and open box designs, are inherently wasteful, however excellent they may be in other regards. What I'm getting at is that in the bass region a loudspeaker cone is a poor coupler with the acoustic space. The larger the space the worse this situation becomes.

So bass loading or acoustic transformation, if you like, is highly desirable. This becomes the biggest argument for ported speakers, as they achieve this with a reasonably sized box.

One of the curses of the commercial world is the numbers game. So everybody strives for the greatest bass extension on their spec sheet. This is a grave error. It is much better to sacrifice bass extension for control. My approach to ported design is to align for tight response an even sacrifice some port output with slightly more damping than customary.

Unfortunately I know no way of usefully augmenting a driver in a truly critically damped fashion without enclosure designs that take significant real estate and likely to raise WAF issues.

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Ported or sealed.. who cares? As long as they sound good is all that matters to me.

I agree. Just enjoy the music and movies. Great sound is great sound. It doesn't matter how you get there as long as you get there.

Most speakers are ported, so I guess the ported outnumbers the sealed. No right or wrong.