Subwoofers - Front Firing or Down Firing - Which Sounds Best?

In my experience down-firing is less likely to excite room nodes.  I assume because they essentially fire in four different directions rather than one.  I would speculate that in a perfect room, front-firing would be best because you could line it up perfectly with the mains and have a perfectly in-phase wave launch.  In practice I imagine down-firing is better in a lot of rooms.  

Sound travels at 1125 feet/second per Wikipedia. That means wavelength is 56 feet at 20 hz and 14 feet at 80 hz. Resonances are caused by reflected waves reinforcing the direct wave. If your room has, say, a 37.5 foot dimension, expect to have a peak at 30 hz, 60hz, and possibly higher multiples of the resonant frequency.

When I was in my twenties I bought a real time analyzer and measurement mic so I could test the calculations. In that period I upgraded from B&W N804s to B&W N802s. That was a change from a front port to a down port. Since the port output is at subwoofer frequencies I consider this a reasonable comparison. The 804s had atrocious in-room measurements. They were actually flat at 20hz. All over the place from 20-100hz. 30db swings in my room. The 802s measured far, far better in the deep bass. They were actually very close to the published spec. They hit the -3db point at almost exactly the published point and the overall deep bass measurements were far smoother. The only plausible explanation is that the down-firing port doesn’t excite resonances to nearly the same degree as a front-firing one. Which means direction matters, even at very low frequencies.

freq/length in feet
20 56.25
30 37.5
40 28.125
50 22.5
60 18.75
70 16.07142857
80 14.0625