@desktopguy --
+1
@mijostyn --
... You want to be listening to the driver and nothing else. Unfortunately, enclosures are musical instruments. They make noise when excited by the driver. They also move. These two problems muddy the sound. Building a perfectly rigid, immovable enclosure is very difficult and for commercial interests very expensive. The Magico is a good example. There are contradictions that you have to work through such as,
it is easier to make a small enclosure stiff but you want an enclosure as heavy as possible so it does not move. You can’t put big drivers in a small enclosure but bigger drivers have less distortion. Companies have to make compromises based mostly on cost. Even relatively expensive subs like JL Audio units have to make compromises.
Forest for the trees; I’ve read this sentiment of yours shared by Robert Harley as well, who holds big subs are practically non-viable due to the added requirements in regards to enclosure stiffness and mass (which, as you point out, is thought to effectively limit or even kill commercial implementation through severe weight and steep prices). For one added size naturally leads to an addition in mass, but the extremity demanded of this and overall enclosure stiffness is, to my mind, exaggerated, not to say that its importance, to some degree, is trivial.
From my chair though this "dogma" if I may of "a perfectly rigid, immovable enclosure" is unnecessary and limiting into seeking out the potential of big subs using big drivers (pre-built options incl. JTR, PSA, Funk Audio, Seaton Sound, Deep Sea Sound etc., and pro companies like Danley Sound Labs), because less will absolutely do in that regard, certainly with quality plyboards and strategic bracing. Magico subs, as someone who may comply with named dogma, are, in my view - and I must be blunt here - laughably expensive because they’ve gone overboard with construction rigidity and overall material use to such a degree that it becomes perverse almost.
Myself I’ve gone the DIY- and pro-route, in addition to commercial "hi-fi" products, as there are very few manufacturers out there supplying horn subs, and there have been no indications, at any SPL, that my properly braced 20 cf. tapped horns build in 18mm 13-ply BB have provided anything other than smooth, enveloping, effortless bass devoid of any apparent enclosure-colorations. If there are any such colorations they’re so miniscule I’d simply wave them aside as insignificant, and in any case there would be other areas to invest one’s scrutiny to better bass performance. With everything hi-fi one can be sure, certainly in most cases, that if you want to go big with subs and adhere to physics it’s going to be outrageously (not to mention unnecessarily) expensive, and often if not mostly you haven’t even gotten to where the physical requirements are properly met. That is, unless you’d consider the sub brands mentioned in parenthesis above, brands I’d guess are less accepted in the hi-fi milieu as anything other than cinephile doable..
