ported versus closed design (speakers)

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leonsound

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Hi,

I seem to remember that when I was interested in speaker design & building about 15 years ago (by the way, anyone interested in Vance Dickason's "loudspeaker design cookbook"?), a closed design was preferred by many. If I recall it provides a more gentle bass roll off, whereas a ported box drops suddenly, but it is compensated for by tuning the port (together with box size etc) so that there is a "bump" beyond the roll-off point, so that it creates the impression of lower bass, but it is in fact mostly resonance and the roll off is not smooth overall.
My ancient B&W DM6's are closed and I still prefer the bass. Am playing with much newer Jamos at the moment but that porty bass sound is just not grabbing me. To make it worse the port is at the back, which I'm guessing makes it much more sensitive to placement from the wall.
Anyway, are all speaker manufacturers leaning towards ported designs these days? They're more sensitive so you need less amp to more more noise.
Have design rules or desired results changed while I was having kids?

Regards
Leon
 
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