Ported versus sealed speakers: is one type better?


Have two systems of wildly different scale and cost.  My main rig features Wilson Watt/Puppy 7's, while at my vacation cabin the system features Totem Rainmakers.

Got me thinking recently that both are ported designs.  And many box speakers are indeed ported designs.

However some of the best and most costly speakers are sealed - not ported.  Examples include Magico and YG Acoustics among others.

 I realize ports are just one aspect of the overall design but I'm seeking opinions on whether one is inherently worse than the other (ported versus non ported)?

Thus would a Magico or YG have an inherent advantage over a Wilson, Rockport,  Von Schweikert or other top ported design?

Any thoughts?
bobbydd
An ideal (maximally flat) sealed vs. ported cabinet results in a larger cabinet for the ported speaker, so sealing an ideal ported cabinet should result in a speaker with a higher -3dB point, as well as an earlier roll-off frequency.

Basically, you end up with an over-damped sealed cabinet.

If we are dealing with a sub that you are going to EQ anyway, this is a pretty good direction to try, given how much a room can affect the output.
Probably depends on the room. My room offered no extension from the ported speakers so deep bass was mia until I went with sealed speakers. I would think active speakers would have the benefit of sealed without the downside.

Putting a woofer into a sealed enclosure raises the resonant frequency of the driver. The acoustic output of the woofer thus starts rolling off at a higher frequency than does the same woofer in a ported enclosure. However, it’s slope is (as Erik properly corrected me on ;-) the shallower 2nd-order, so that as frequency descends, the output of the sealed woofer eventually crosses the more-steeply-falling 4th-order slope of the ported woofer, thereby providing more output at the lowest frequencies both woofers are capable of. I.E., the woofer plays lower in a sealed enclosure than in a ported.

I have a pair of 1/4-wave transmission line enclosures, each with the famous KEF B139 woofer (used in pairs by David Wilson in his WAMM loudspeaker) at it’s front end (together creating a fundamental resonant Q at 15Hz), and while very good for it’s time (early-70’s) is no match for the Rythmik F15HP, let alone the Rythmik/GR Research OB/Dipole Sub. Jim Salk installs a Rythmik subwoofer and associated plate amp in his upmarket speaker models. 

I have GRs OB Dual 12", servo. It's different, and takes a bit to get use to. They pressure the room all together different..They can clean a poorly designed room right up. With any treatment at all from 100 hz down..to 20hz< you'll hear and feel every note, with pretty good authority..and great coverage for the Swarm crowd, I heard 4 GRs duals 12s. Yea something to write home about...They are columns, too.. LOL 3 12s
Columns....

Regards..
@erik_squires put it very well and very succinctly: "The thing that makes a bigger difference is matching the room."

Lacking Erik’s gift of succinctability, here’s my take, from the perspective of a designer:

In my opinion where the speaker is likely to be placed in the room makes a great deal of difference.

Sealed box design doesn’t offer the designer very many degrees of freedom. Once the woofer and box size have been chosen, the shape of the frequency response curve (not counting room interaction) is virtually carved in stone. Increasing the box size beyond optimum will raise the -3 dB frequency but lower the - 6 dB frequency, while decreasing the box size below optimum will have the inverse effect. And the theoretical "optimum" box size isn’t necessarily optimum for a given application.

Vented box design allows the designer more flexibility but imo requires more care. Assuming the woofer and box size have been chosen, different tuning frequencies result in significantly different frequency response curves. So if I have a pretty good idea of where the speakers will be placed, I can take anticipated boundary reinforcement into account in choosing what the frequency response curve should look like. Also, having multiple pluggable ports allows the end user to somewhat tailor the speaker’s low-end response to his room situation.

Note that the "boominess" often attributed to vented boxes includes the room interaction. Take the same speaker outdoors and it will NOT sound boomy... point being, it is the net in-room frequency response, not the speaker’s inherent low frequency time-domain response, which dominates our perception.

One drawback of ported boxes is this: As a note near the tuning frequency decays, its pitch can actually shift in the direction of the tuning frequency. This makes sealed boxes generally more suitable for small studio monitors than vented boxes; with large studio monitors, the tuning frequency can often be made low enough that pitch-shift is not an issue.

Personally I tend to prefer use ported boxes in my designs for three reasons:

1. Greater room-adaptation flexibility, assuming pluggable ports are part of the design.

2. In general woofers which work well in ported boxes have more powerful magnets and/or lighter cones, both of which imo contribute to midrange articulation.

3. In a series of blind tests intended to sort out the best internal damping material for a sealed box with the priority on midrange sound quality, I accidentally found that a ported box could have better midrange sound quality.

Duke