A sub question for "General AV" forum

KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
I recently came across a thread from 2014 which had a survey on "What is right for you?" regarding type of sub. Currently, 43 people responded with 65% of respondents voting Sealed and 25% Ported (the other 10% is split among less common options).

However, it seems like ported subs are recommended more often than sealed here.

Hoping to get two things out of this thread:

1) Please participate in the survey (linked below) so as to make it more accurate.

2) Any ideas why the discrepancy between the survey vs recommendations?

The reason I posted this under general was to try to give this survey the greatest exposure. I don't know if there is much difference between people who keep up with the General Forum vs people who keep up with the Sub Forum. (Please forgive me, overlords!)

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/sealed-vs-ported-subwoofers-which-is-right-for-you.90167/
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Hi Ken. I voted ported. As you know, the answer to this question is, "it depends". IMO any advantage sealed has is in waf, and space savings. Smaller rooms can be fine with sealed. But the age old claims of ported subs being tubby and slow, and sealed are tight and musical, are not true, and I think many people still hold on to these beliefs as to hold themselves up to some audiophile nonsense. Another thing people confuse is that you can plop a sealed sub in a room and have all this magical room gain to give you single hz performance. In reality, sealed is the way to do that, but it takes crazy power and excursion, and most commercial subs, even if they can reach 10hz, can't do it with any meaningful output. It's also dependent on room dimensions as to where room gain starts to take effect. How low do you want to spend?
For question 2), I don't know really. I'm sure you'll get some good answers here. I feel a little nervous being the first one to answer! Lol
 
tyhjaarpa

tyhjaarpa

Audioholic Field Marshall
Well there are pros and cons in both. So I guess it really depends on personal preferences / needs.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I didn't vote as there were no "it depends" or "other" or something. Tool for the job and all that. I like and agree with William's response. For such a small sampling hard to say the survey/poll means much of anything. Might have been a bunch of guys who think sealed is for music, ported is for movies, dunno.
 
KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
Well, remember that the question is worded "Which is right for you?"!
While that does not give all of the info, it does avoid most of the "it depends" issues.
A comment here on how you voted and why that is right for you, would be nice.

There are probably many who may prefer a ported sub, but chose a sealed for compact size rather than SQ. That is a reality that usually won't show up if the question is "What would you recommend"
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Well, remember that the question is worded "Which is right for you?"!
While that does not give all of the info, it does avoid most of the "it depends" issues.
I understand that but I have several rooms, and I'm still building new subs so I don't have a clear preference at this time. I did go large multiple sealed in search of lower frequencies in my main room, but have ported and passive radiator subs in others as well. So far, no preference in that regard (in terms of the poll) particularly :)
 
KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
I understand that but I have several rooms, and I'm still building new subs so I don't have a clear preference at this time. I did go large multiple sealed in search of lower frequencies in my main room, but have ported and passive radiator subs in others as well. So far, no preference in that regard (in terms of the poll) particularly :)
Cool, and I look forward to hearing about your experiences as they bring you to some sort of conclusions.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Cool, and I look forward to hearing about your experiences as they bring you to some sort of conclusions.
I doubt I'll change my mind and narrow it down to a single type...there's more to it than simply type.
 
KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
I doubt I'll change my mind and narrow it down to a single type...there's more to it than simply type.
Yes, assuming that you find the ported and the sealed subs both have their respective place in you home, you could not really say one is right for you.

My objective is to find out what members have (or would get if what they have is not "right" for them and could do it over - which includes real world constraints such as budget and WAF).
 
tyhjaarpa

tyhjaarpa

Audioholic Field Marshall
Exactly! What are your personal preferences/needs?
WAF and limited space prety much drove me to sealed sub, how ever I don't really need the output of ported sub so sealed sub fits really well in my setup.
 
3db

3db

Audioholic Slumlord
I prefer ported because a good ported design will sound every bit as musical as a good sealed design and when comparing at the same price point offer higher SPL and dig deeper than their sealed counterpart.
 

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