Sealed or Ported for HT Subs [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

PDA

View Full Version : Sealed or Ported for HT Subs



gixxerific
12-29-2005, 05:40 PM
Music 95% - Movies 4.5% - TV 0.5%

I'm a car audio guy till now. Spent enough $'s on my rides 'bout time I start on the Home system. I always prefered the sound of sealed over ported in a vehilce, but what about home use. I've built several boxes ported and sealed, though ported get's louder sealed has the definition and detail you can't get with ported.

Now Home auido is a whole 'nother world are the same principles true?

jocko_nc
12-29-2005, 08:06 PM
Consider the driver... For music the Dayton Reference is said to be the cat's meow. On advice, I am running two of the 10.00 "hi fidelity" models: Sweet.

Did I mention sweet?

jocko

paul_pci
12-29-2005, 08:33 PM
It depends on the room and acoustics of the room. I went with a sealed sub because I have a highly reflective, small (16'X12) enclosed room and a ported sub would most likely reinforce the boominess of the lower frequency. If you have a more open, spacious, and deader room, then a ported sub should work fine.

kexodusc
12-30-2005, 04:32 AM
It's not so much that one design is superior to the other, but rather matching the design to your application and budget.

I prefer sealed subs for music for a lot of sound quality reasons, but to be fair most 10" sealed subs I've heard roll-off pretty high in frequency. Sealed subs by design roll off higher but at a slower rate. This is great for music because of the transfer function that sees the room add response at almost the same rate as the woofers roll-off.

But for home theater, things get a bit more complicated. You want more bottom extension, well into the low 20 Hz region if possible. This means the woofer needs more excursion, which compromises sound quality, or has to be bigger. As in 15". This won't work in a small room, especially if you're married.

In comes the ported design that gives you 80% of the sound quality and 125% of the bass extension in a smaller package. The more versatile ported design is also available at a lower cost. By using the air inside the cabinet, you get a lot of bass for free. Sounds great to me. I'll go out on a limb and say for explosions, cool space ship sounds, tanks, machine guns, earthquakes, Tyrannosaurus Rex, etc, you won't notice the sound quality differences so much. For soundtracks, you probably still won't because you're engaged in the movie. And for music, well, with a bit of effort you can get them to sound fine. It's not like ported subs all sound bad.

Pick your budget, then size requirements and go from there. Since you're skewed more towards music I think you'll end up with a sealed sub, but you might want to give it some thought.

gixxerific
12-30-2005, 01:07 PM
Thanks for the replies.

I will not go smaller than 12in. The right sub even in that size range will have plenty of excursion i would think. I have 12in. Adire Brahmas in my truck they have plenty of excursion. These in particular sound 200% better sealed at 1 cu ft. and will go as low as 10 hz maybe lower thats the lowest test tone I have. They roll off naturally pretty early around 60 or so. Had them as well in a 2.2 cu ft. ported tuned to 24 hz not even close to the depth they hit sealed.
I will most likely build my sub so I will most likely try both and see what sounds best. Got plenty of time just bought the reciever for X-mas gotta pay that off before I start bying new ****.

Got plenty of researching to do so see ya around.

Any other ideas\opinions would be aprreciated.
Thanks again

jocko_nc
12-30-2005, 01:40 PM
If you decide to port, look into the Precision Ports. PE has them. They have a parabolic taper of 2X the diameter at the ends. They are big, but I am glad I chose them. I was surprised how much air flow is generated, yet they are silent.

You'll probably need a long length for the tuning you will want. You'll need to order an extra tube section for lengths over 11.00. My calculations were 17.00, that is quite a long tube.

jocko