Well, it depends.
Compared to sealed, ported boxes are more efficient at low frequencies, and also reduce cone excursion in the useful range (reducing excursion requirements is a useful feature when the cone area is marginal, such as with compact speakers). The tradeoffs are that a highpass filter is recommended (although for low power use, it's not much of an issue), and that the box is bigger. The final low-frequency response is dependent on the driver.
By contrast, sealed boxes can be very compact, and can be EQ'd to any low-frequency response you want. The thing to remember, though, is that for every octave down you want to go, you need 4x the cone excursion to keep the same SPL.
I played around with this: Piston Excursion calculator
for a while, and decided that ~80dB (at one metre) would be loud enough for my usage, and so I could use a pair of 4.5" drivers with about 2mm of one-way travel and hit 35Hz. The KEF HTS3001SE drivers manage that. Just.
It's worth noting that the calculator only tells you about the mechanical limitations of the drivers - how much air they can move, and how that translates into SPL at a given frequency. The frequency response of a driver in a cabinet, how much power/EQ is needed, etc etc will still need to be determined.
They only use that cone excursion when the program material requires it. Playing simple girl & guitar stuff, they can get very loud because the LF requirements are minimal. Switch to Kaiju - Hunter (caution, NSFW lyrics) and when the bass drops, the cones are given a real workout even at moderate levels.
In my opinion, small sealed boxes with EQ are the way to go for desktop usage: we want something physically compact, with respectable LF extension, and we're not chasing high SPLs.
I'd recommend playing around with the link above and think about the sort of SPLs you're looking for, what low-frequency extension you require, and then work out what sort of size drivers you're going to need.
To throw a curve-ball into the mix, passive radiators act like a bass reflex port, but typically take up less cabinet volume. They still need a ported-sized box (give or take) to achieve a good LF response without EQ, but if you introduce EQ then the cabinet could be made smaller. As we make a cabinet smaller, we lose efficiency towards the low-frequency range. EQ tells the amplifier to throw more power in there, which brings the low-frequency range up to level again.
Chris
Compared to sealed, ported boxes are more efficient at low frequencies, and also reduce cone excursion in the useful range (reducing excursion requirements is a useful feature when the cone area is marginal, such as with compact speakers). The tradeoffs are that a highpass filter is recommended (although for low power use, it's not much of an issue), and that the box is bigger. The final low-frequency response is dependent on the driver.
By contrast, sealed boxes can be very compact, and can be EQ'd to any low-frequency response you want. The thing to remember, though, is that for every octave down you want to go, you need 4x the cone excursion to keep the same SPL.
I played around with this: Piston Excursion calculator
for a while, and decided that ~80dB (at one metre) would be loud enough for my usage, and so I could use a pair of 4.5" drivers with about 2mm of one-way travel and hit 35Hz. The KEF HTS3001SE drivers manage that. Just.
It's worth noting that the calculator only tells you about the mechanical limitations of the drivers - how much air they can move, and how that translates into SPL at a given frequency. The frequency response of a driver in a cabinet, how much power/EQ is needed, etc etc will still need to be determined.
They only use that cone excursion when the program material requires it. Playing simple girl & guitar stuff, they can get very loud because the LF requirements are minimal. Switch to Kaiju - Hunter (caution, NSFW lyrics) and when the bass drops, the cones are given a real workout even at moderate levels.
In my opinion, small sealed boxes with EQ are the way to go for desktop usage: we want something physically compact, with respectable LF extension, and we're not chasing high SPLs.
I'd recommend playing around with the link above and think about the sort of SPLs you're looking for, what low-frequency extension you require, and then work out what sort of size drivers you're going to need.
To throw a curve-ball into the mix, passive radiators act like a bass reflex port, but typically take up less cabinet volume. They still need a ported-sized box (give or take) to achieve a good LF response without EQ, but if you introduce EQ then the cabinet could be made smaller. As we make a cabinet smaller, we lose efficiency towards the low-frequency range. EQ tells the amplifier to throw more power in there, which brings the low-frequency range up to level again.
Chris
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