Ported versus sealed speakers: is one type better?

Speaker designs are tradeoffs. Ported designs can go deeper and play louder, in general, while sealed designs have superior definition and textures.

Ported designs do NOT "go" deeper than do sealed. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Ported woofers provide more output down to resonance than do sealed designs (which are already rolling off at 6dB/octave at their resonant frequency), below which they roll off much faster (12dB/octave) than do sealed. The same driver in a sealed enclosure will play lower in frequency than will the same driver in a ported one, but with lower output above resonance. That's why sealed are recommended for smaller rooms: with the gain provided by that room, a sealed woofer's output will match that of a ported, and will play to a lower frequency. And with, some feel, better sound quality. Rythmik's Peter Ding recommends his sealed models for music reproduction.

The same driver in a sealed enclosure will play lower in frequency than will the same driver in a ported one,

Kind of/sort of. Given the same driver in two ideal cabinets, the ported version will have a lower -3 dB, but since the slope is 4th order (24dB/Octave) instead of 2nd order (12 dB / octave) at even lower frequencies the sealed will catch up. I encourage you to grab a box simulator to prove this to yourself, or look up any woofer in the Madisound woofer list and compare the -3dB points of their recommended cabinets for just about any woofer. Here’s a random example:

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-10-woofers/satori-wo24p-8-9.5-egyptian-papyrus-cone-woo...

As you can see here, the highest -3dB point is achieved with the recommended sealed box.

but with lower output above resonance.

Simply not true. Again, with the same driver in 2 ideal cabinets the ported vs. sealed cabinet has exactly the same output above resonance as the cabinet volume and alignment is no longer involved and is purely a function of the driver motor. This is true for all open back drivers, not just woofers. This is something I actually learned in audio engineering class with Dr. Leach ages ago. I encourage you to read any book on speaker design to further your understanding.


Best,


E

Here my more simple answer, as a lot of the more technical details were shared already. 

Closed cabinets tend to sound more 'dry' compared to ported / bass reflex designs. 

So bass reflex design will sound LESS dry, by comparison and all this, even when either design is properly implemented. 

Also, practically all closed cabinets have to use more stuffing, expensive sheep wool preferred to plastic / hollow fibre to make the bass drivers 'see' more internal volume, where as ported bass reflex cabinets need usualy a far more minimal rip-wool sheeting, layed on all surfaces exposed to the bass drivers. 

Since the internal pressure in enclosed cabinets is immensely higher, internal braceing becomes more critical than in an open, bass reflex designs. 

To build very large closed cabinets becomes very critical, to impossible.
I suspect, why designers doing this, went for airplane Dur-aluminium material rather than super-wood or wood laminate. 

There is plenty more to all this, but this came to my mind on the subject, with out going into issues of Q, vs internal volume etc. etc. 

M. 🇿🇦 

PS: Early Watt/Puppy versions had some problems with their port design (too small in diameter vs required length), producing quite critical bass response issues. 

bd24 is right but the result is that the ported design sounds as if it has more bass. Ported designs can be excellent such as Wilson's but the vast majority of them are colored. Designing ports is easy. It is just a math problem. I think where most designs fail is in implementation, cheap materials, resonant enclosures etc. 
I do not like any enclosure except for subwoofers. Open baffle speakers crossing over to subs at around 100 Hz work great. I use dipole ESLs
For subwoofers sealed is absolutely best. With signal processing and a very powerful amp you can make the driver do whatever you want. As long as the enclosure is inert you are in business. The best designs now are "balanced force." You put a driver in opposite sides of  sealed enclosure so that their vibrational forces cancel out. 
Infinite baffle design was mentioned. Bozak used Infinite baffle enclosures. This requires a large enclosure. Large enclosures are difficult to keep quiet. The bigger the board the more prone to vibration and resonance it is. Bozak used 3/4" plywood. The Bozak enclosure was a musical instrument. My father had a pair. With a Dynaco Stereo 70 they played very loud with rich chocolate flavored bass. They were colored as hell but to an 8 year old kid that system was the nuts.
In my own experience except for subs, the best enclosure is no enclosure.