Overwhelmed - too many speakers out there...

[tin ear]

Hey tin ear,
You may want to take the time to get into town.

I'll do it! Thanks.
The place is real easy it get to & I remember the merchant wasn't the least bit 'snooty'.

Not snooty but he'll sell you whatever you can afford, I guess:
6. Nordost Blue Heaven speaker wire($499/10' pair): Superb cable, should improve nearly any system by
a substantial amount. Matched by equally nifty Blue Heaven interconnect ($199/1 meter pair.)

[Woochifer]

I'll do it! Thanks.
The place is real easy it get to & I remember the merchant wasn't the least bit 'snooty'.

Not snooty but he'll sell you whatever you can afford, I guess:
6. Nordost Blue Heaven speaker wire($499/10' pair): Superb cable, should improve nearly any system by
a substantial amount. Matched by equally nifty Blue Heaven interconnect ($199/1 meter pair.)

Yeah, sounds like a real winning strategy that this non-snooty store is suggesting -- spend $500 on speaker cables, and leave $100 of budget for the speakers themselves! And some audiophiles wonder why the audio industry is in such a state of decline.

As for your original inquiry, the majority of speakers nowadays are ported speakers. Over the last 20 or so years, the quality of ported speakers has become a lot more consistent and as such, they dominate the market right now. Not a whole lot of sealed acoustic suspension speakers out there right now. Even well-known purveyors of the acoustic suspension design such as AR, KLH, Advent, and Boston Acoustics switched over to ported designs a long time ago. NHT makes some good acoustc suspension speakers, and you'll find a lot of subwoofer manufacturers that use sealed designs.

I would not choose the speakers based strictly on the design. Even speakers built to a comparable box design could be voiced very differently. I think the first thing you need to figure out is the type of sound you're looking for. If you note some parallels between the sound you want and the design philosophy, then you can narrow down your list. But, the first thing to do is get out there and so some listening. Don't rely on reviews and recommendations alone, since everyone's got their own biases and those might not correspond with what you're looking for. The only opinion that's worth anything to you is yours.