Ported, Sealed or Transmission Line

Sealed speakers beat ported speakers in the areas of transient response. Because of this, you don't get the port resonances and noise that blurs the sound. And, because of their slower rolloff, produce more deep bass. They are also the easiest, and least costly to design and implement. There aren't really too many drawbacks to a sealed box.

Ported speakers are supposed to be up to 3 dB more sensitive than sealed speakers. In reality, it is not the case. They have a bump in the midbass which many people seem to like, and give the impression of having more bass than they do. While it is difficult to correctly implement a ported speaker correctly, it seems the public does not really care.

Transmission lines have excellent bass response. They have relatively loud deep bass, and can pack a real wallop. They combine the sharpness of attack and decay of a sealed speaker, with the impact of a ported speaker. In my experience they do not have less sensitivity than other designs.

Let's also not forget that while all Acoustic Suspension speakers (AS) are sealed boxes, not all sealed boxes are AS. When the compliance of the driver exceeds that of the air in the box (i.e. when the box gets larger and larger), this alignment is referred to as an Infinite Baffle (IB). And, the issues which have been raised in this thread regarding the AS speakers are ameliorated. Correct me if I am wrong, but Sean's projects tend to go in this direction - big woofers in big boxes that make big bass.

Again, while a TL is superior to a sealed box, it's really hard to go wrong with a sealed speaker.

Eldartford, there are plenty of excellent sounding ported speakers on the market. Dogmatic comments in audio lead to a lot of instances where the person ends up in the wrong.

We're on the same page, Eldartford.

One thing I now remember Bud recently telling me involves the superiority of the TL over the sealed/aperiodic alignment. As many know, the Fried C satellite (often used with D 8" or O 10" subwoofer in the Valhalla system) was originally an aperiodic design, but when they began manfacturing the Model Q, which had also loaded the midrange in a transmission line, their flagship speaker was now inferior to the next model down. It made that much of a difference, as the TL midrange is even more important than a TL woofer.

Obviously, the focus of development switched to bringing the C satellite inline. Thus, the C3L/C4 was born.

It was SO much better that Bud used to demo them at shows and get togethers against the same speaker, aperiodically loaded. He says that people would often get quite overheated, swearing that he must be using different drivers or crossovers in the two speakers. But, he was not. The TL on its own was just very much better.

I sound like a broken record, but Sean makes a lot of good points.

While I also don't have a lot of experience with aperiodic enclosures, Bud is a big fan of them in certain instances. The transient response is supposedly improved, and the impedance curve is noticeably flattened - resulting in a more "resitive" speaker. Personally, as a tube guy, I don't get so panicked about high impedances (my Atmas love them) it's the low impedances I am more worried about.

The Fried Beta used an aperiodic enclosure, and Bud (who likes sealed boxes, just not as much as a TL) tells me it was the only way to get bass out of the small box. It makes the box size "appear" larger.

While I hope to do a lot of testing in the next 18 months, it would be interesting if we had some more A/B testing going on with between sealed and aperiodic boxes. Off the top of my head, I can't think of why a standard sealed box would be superior. And, you don't need to rely on Dynaudio or ScanSpeak's variovents. A lot of people just use a resin shower drain they get from a home improvement store, and foam or layers of gauze or felt.

Eldartford, as you said, "to each, his own", but I find the bass of electrostatic speakers to be less powerful and extended than a full range loudspeaker. They do have a lot of other niceties, though.