Subwoofers: Ported or sealed?

Don't forget about passive radiators.

Acoustic suspended sub = Boring!

Ported = Bueno! :-)

For music, I much prefer low Q sealed. The roll-off much better matches the room gain so flatter to start with, and you don't need additional subsonic high pass filtering. Less group delay but I don't think that is really very important. 

If you are using DSP eq ( I suggest you do), the cabinet alignment may not be as critical. I like to start close and just hit the modes, so not giving up on sealed.  I run the DSpeaker box in line with the sub only on my stereo.  HT is of course done by the AVR. 

A passive radiator is a PORTED enclosure with the advantage of no port chuffing. The PR needs to be at least twice the area of the woofer to work correctly. Many are not. Very handy when the port calculations wind up with 8 foot ports. Down side is cost. 

For movie special effects where I want that crazy 20 Hz rumble, OK, I can see ported. That said, my HT is a pair of 10 inch sealed, Q .65 in push-pull and they can shake the house. F3 is around 30 Hz, so with room gain, they are almost flat @ 20.   My stereo is a single  12 inch critical Q (.5).  It does way more than I could ever use in my large open space living room for music. I don't do heavy organ or computer synthesized stuff. If I can feel tympany in my chest, that is enough.   Both systems are powered by a simple O-Audio BASH plate. No mega power needed. I know 1000W or so is popular, but you don't actually use it. Do the math.  I can do 95 dB with less than 1% THD with either system.  The HT does 102 dB before XMax @ 20 Hz. 

Not mentioned are infinite baffle.  They have quite a following. A DIY only. Finding a driver to work is not easy. I played with them briefly but found no real advantage. 

"Tight" "Accurate" "Dynamic"    Marketing BS.   It is the execution, driver, and crossover.   Or people repeating you-tube reviewers who have never designed speakers making up crap to fill a video. Any cabinet and speaker can be much, or sharp as a tack. 

The one absolute truth is:  Listen for yourself in your room. 

For music, I much prefer low Q sealed. The roll-off much better matches the room gain so flatter to start with,

This is a subject I don't think most audiophiles understand.  You have no idea what in-room bass response will be until you get the speaker in place.  In many cases the problem is too much bass and exaggerrated room modes.

you don't need additional subsonic high pass filtering.

Well, a subsonic filter can protect your speakers and reduce power demand, but sure.

@tvrgeek wrote: "For music, I much prefer low Q sealed. The roll-off much better matches the room gain so flatter to start with..."

@erik_squires responded: "This is a subject I don't think most audiophiles understand.  You have no idea what in-room bass response will be until you get the speaker in place.  In many cases the problem is too much bass and exaggerated room modes."

A couple of different researchers, Martin Colloms and Dan Wiggins, have written to the effect that "typical" room gain from boundary reinforcement is about 3 dB per octave across the bottom couple of octaves.   Now obviously this is going vary significantly from one room to the next, as well as with speaker and/or listener position within a given room, and this general bass-boosting trend does not predict the inevitable room-induced peaks and dips within the bass region.  But the general trend is that rooms introduce some rise in frequency response in the bass region

In general rooms tend to boost the low end by less than the typical rolloff of a sealed box system, which is often given as 12 dB per octave, although a very low-Q sealed box can have an effective rolloff closer to 6 dB per octave.  Therefore very low-Q sealed box systems often synergize quite well with the room, as long as their rolloff doesn't start too high.

On the other hand vented boxes are usually tuned to remain "flat" down to a considerably lower frequency than a comparable sealed box, rolling off rapidly below the port tuning frequency.  This inherent response PLUS room gain can result in the "too much bass and exaggerated room modes" Eric mentions. 

Going back to our hypothetical "typical" room gain of 3 dB per octave in the bass region, it's really not feasible to build a sealed box with a Q low enough that its inherent rolloff is the approximate inverse of this room gain. 

However it IS possible to build a vented box whose inherent response slopes downward by about 3 dB per octave across the bass region, accelerating to 4th order (24 dB per octave) rolloff below the port tuning frequency.  If the port tuning frequency is sufficiently low (say 20 Hz ballpark), then the system's inherent response starts outs "in the ballpark" as far as synergy with room gain goes.

So while I agree that in general sealed boxes interact with the room better than vented boxes, imo there is a type of vented box tuning that can usually interact with the room even better than an unequalized sealed box.  My marketing department calls it "room gain compensation" tuning. 

Duke

vented box subwoofer manufacturer