Tom - highly congested territory with more questions than answers. I have been working with turbulent / laminar flow for a couple of years now. I suggest you experiment with an open mind, since there is much more to the area than first appears. As a point of Thiel history, these multi-faceted problems of ports led Jim to migrate to passive radiators rather than ports. Note the model 1 which leap-frogged from ports to radiators, landing on that long, slotted low-turbulence port on the 1.6.
There are too many issues to address here, but note that taking the port outboard exacerbates the problems of coupling the port’s output to the surrounding air. The baffle flush with the port end serves to support that transition. Moving your port outboard may reduce some internal turbulence, but at the expense of increased outboard turbulence.
One thing I’ve learned is that the surface turbulences are audible, that they affect the full-range sound, not just the bass tuning frequencies, and that the particulars of the baffle surfaces surrounding the port have audible effects.
I don’t know how that coin-toss of internal vs external would land. Please keep us posted about anything you learn.
