ported or sealed?

i listen to rock, i really love punchy bass, but everynow and then i still want the deep round bass for like techno and those random intense heavy rock breakdowns w/ tons of bass and things like that. i have read that sealed is punch and acurate, which sounds like what i would want, but does it still allow for deep round resonant bass at times? or is it punchy at all times?

Sealed subwoofers are always more accurate at the cost of amplitude. A well designed ported subwoofer can sound nearly as good with more amplitude.



Most idiots putting speakers in boxes wouldn't know Thiel-Small if the two of the walked up and introduced themselves. At the same time most idiots don't have a clue on port tuning ... so ya' take you're chances unless you know what your doing and have the equipment to do your own.



For me I want dynamic pop your fillings out transients which means 8-10" woofers driven with lots of amplifier with a high damping factor and keeping the impedance at the 4-8 ohm level vice the louder 2 ohms. I compensate with the size of my amplifiers.

Simple way I've heard it explained before is Sealed for Rock n Roll, ported for Rap.

Also note that ported enclosures require more internal airspace, and as Paul mentions designing the port can make or break the box. I know enough to realize that it was a headache I wanted to avoid. So the 5 or 6 boxes I've built were all sealed.

And just remember that building boxes is fundamentally easy (and addicting). Once you build your first box, you'll probably come up with various improvements or other things to try... and that's half the fun. The only hard part is making the install look clean and professional, but that only takes a little planning and time really.

But don't thing sealed isn't about big bass. I had a 12" powered by 1000 watt RMS amp in a sealed enclosure, all with 0/1 gauge and the big three. It was in the back of a Ranger extended cab (fairly small cabin) and would shake my mirrors out of alignment. You could "Feel" the bass in your lower back.

so is a sealed box still able to produce deep boomy bass if needed?
it defenitily sounds like i wanna get a sealed.

Yes - you just want to select a Qtc of 1.6 to 1.8.

Here's the work I did on my Zenclosure for my Z. I went with a nice 0.97 Qtc for a bit of a bump but not too bad.