Ports control the frequency at which the air volume in the cabinet resonates, and actually reduces cone excursion at and around the resonant frequency. In poor implementations, though, ports can produce noise. Also, ports introduce more group delay in the low frequencies.
I prefer a sealed cabinet. But the tradeoff is low frequency extension. I also plugged the ports on my speakers and I use a carefully integrated subwoofer to fill in the low frequencies.
Ports just cause more problems in rooms. ports can be so slow and sluggish to the point where it can exaggerate certain nulls in the lows because by the time those frequencies try to be produced by the woofer it’s long enough to make a null or make a null much worst. In a sealed box you get more accuracy for mixing and mastering, and you lessen the need for a lot of room acoustics. This is just my opinion tho and from what I have seen. Also, for me at least I’d rather take accurate and tight bass over boomy and hyped.
You can make a good speaker either way and in a blind listening test you can't tell whether a speaker is ported or not. A badly designed ported speaker can be boomy but that's rare these days, except maybe for some car subwoofers.
I have not experienced that but, as noted, ports introduce high group delay. But, equalizing with IIR filters also introduces group delay. I have seen it stated that mimicking the performance of a port with an IIR filter introduces just as much group delay as does a port. I have not verified that, though.
Ports have their advantages and disadvantages. Generally speaking, in a system that does not have a subwoofer, I think the advantages of a well designed port outweigh the disadvantages. I never have used bass traps, and I have had some ported speakers that perform fairly well. Much depends on the room in which the speakers are placed.
The ns10 is fast because of its closed design not necessarily because of the lack of bass. The Kh310 has a lot of bass but it’s accurate and fast due to its sealing
Ports can be ok if you have the right room and a lot of bass traps. Then they can work better for mixing although it isn’t as ideal. Maybe if u enjoy Hi-Fi listening and like it that way then okay that’s fine.. I’m specifically talking about mixing and mastering, where a sealed cab is far superior to the ported designs IMO. When I see three ways that are ported it’s just comes across as a mediocre cheap speaker to me that’s trying to impress me with bass than give me accuracy. I heavily trust my intuition when it comes to speakers
Yes, that is largely correct for the dominant group delay component. The major difference is that a port will have a longer decay. If you design a port well, this isn’t really an issue.
As to what specifically? If you are asking about port vs no port in general, it much depends on the use case and listener preferences.
I fully agree.
It's certainly EQ'd. Linkwitz Transform etc.
The NS10 has no low end below about 90hz. Like... Seriously. It's not "fast", it's deficient.
What it lacks in bass it makes up for in aggressive treble, though!
This post shows the generalized trade-off between sealed and ported speakers. The ported speaker has a lower -3dB cutoff frequency, but at some point the curves cross and the sealed box puts out more sound. You can tune the port with a slight bump before cutoff to extend the cutoff a bit lower. The slight bump may be unnoticeable or even desirable. Or you can you over-do the bump and get "bad sound".
How fast? Like, in mph?
www.audiosciencereview.com
Indeed, my question was more about whether that EQ introduces more group delay than a bass reflex or not.
