Ported, Sealed or Transmission Line

Check your local library and they'll usually have a few books on the topic. Weems' (David) might be better for what you need to know: just to get some general insight. The tone of the book is still quite contemporary despite looking 10years outdated. A two week checkout should be enough. Dickason's book isn't bad and more technical in every way that Weems'. Its a good book to have too, but get some momentum through something simpler. The answer to your question is kind of hard to answer in a condensed straightforward manner.

Is one inherently better than the other?

That question's answer is (IMHO) no. But, they do have real differences and performance tradeoffs, and other tradeoffs.

Again I sum it up..."Ported speakers make excellent bird houses".

Tobias writes:

Sealed box designs need more amplifier power, on the whole, because the cones have to work against the very stiff spring of the air trapped inside the box.

Although stiffness is provided by the air in the sealed box, the spider on a driver designed for acoustic suspension is less stiff, and compensates.

When Vilchur designed the acoustic suspension speaker he modified the driver spider to provide less spring restoring force on cone excursion because he knew the air in his sealed box would provide some restoring force.

The main reason the acoustic suspension speaker needs more amplifier power is the energy of the back wave is totally absorbed by the stuffing (converted to heat). In a reflex design, the out-of-phase back wave energy hits the port and is inverted 180 degrees, and is now in phase with the sound coming off the front of the driver. This extends the bass response, although the eventual rolloff when it does occur is much steeper (typically 12dB per octave as opposed to 6 dB per octave).

There are many good speakers using the bass reflex system.

Regards,

Thanks for the correction, Metralla.

I knew about the spider design ( and the more resilient cone surround ) but I hadn't absorbed the back wave concept. Needed more stuffing, possibly.