Port near floor best for good/best room integration?

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I see many speaker mfs position their ports near the floor for best room integration as they say.

However, acousticans often says that placing a vent or driver near a boundary gives a gain boost and you excites room resonances maximally, which more often is a bad thing as they say.

So what is really the best location?

In my mind, a small monitor with limited low freq output could benifit by a vent location near the floor to gain some boost, but a big loudspeaker with lots of low freq output, with the vent near the floor, has the potential to give an overblown bass response?
 
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IMO

Port placement near floor has to be optimised according to the box tuning and driver's abilities.

It's a handy technique to extend the response down half an octave or so *if done well*. My sense is that it's best used in cases where the room modes are benign to begin with (which means room remains the most important thing anyway), and the box/driver combination does not excite those modes.

The few times I've tried it it seems to work well. A front-facing port near the floor can be used to prevent some floor bounce associated with two-way speakers with a high-mounted midbass driver. Also reduces midrange leakage a bit without requiring a rear-facing port (which has its own issues). However am unsure if it actually helps the bass response.

A downfiring port is the toughest nut to crack and will *not* sound good everywhere. I've built an example of each, both with very different driver combinations and design goals, and both have worked out quite well.

Previously my attempts with downfiring subs and ports were less than successful because I was trying to push for unachievable results. Once I began tuning the box higher, I had better outcomes.
 
IMO

Port placement near floor has to be optimised according to the box tuning and driver's abilities.

It's a handy technique to extend the response down half an octave or so *if done well*. My sense is that it's best used in cases where the room modes are benign to begin with (which means room remains the most important thing anyway), and the box/driver combination does not excite those modes.

The few times I've tried it it seems to work well. A front-facing port near the floor can be used to prevent some floor bounce associated with two-way speakers with a high-mounted midbass driver. Also reduces midrange leakage a bit without requiring a rear-facing port (which has its own issues). However am unsure if it actually helps the bass response.

A downfiring port is the toughest nut to crack and will *not* sound good everywhere. I've built an example of each, both with very different driver combinations and design goals, and both have worked out quite well.

Previously my attempts with downfiring subs and ports were less than successful because I was trying to push for unachievable results. Once I began tuning the box higher, I had better outcomes.

Interesting! It sounds correct that if the tuning freq of the down firing vent is below floor/ceiling standing wave resonance then there will be no excitation. a down firing woofer however, that has a wider bandwidth, will excite this resonance. This woofer will benefit from being lifted up from the floor for minimum excitation.
 
frugal-phile™
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What is the difference? Will the low freq response differ much? Will the impedance response look any difference to a bass reflex?

A bass relex needs to has approximately “cube” dimension ratios. As one dimension grows wrt the others it transitions into a transmission line (mass loaded by the testricted vent (aka port)). The transmission line can go lower as it takes advantag eof the quarter-wave resonance. A port choosen using a BR modeling program will be wrong.

dave
 
A downfiring port is the toughest nut to crack and will *not* sound good everywhere. I've built an example of each, both with very different driver combinations and design goals, and both have worked out quite well.
I've never had any difficulty with downfiring ports working as designed, nor had any particular problems with them. It's my go-to default arrangement.
 
A bass relex needs to has approximately “cube” dimension ratios. As one dimension grows wrt the others it transitions into a transmission line (mass loaded by the testricted vent (aka port)). The transmission line can go lower as it takes advantag eof the quarter-wave resonance. A port choosen using a BR modeling program will be wrong.

dave


for those floor standing models i have seen, it is quite common with half wavelength resonance, around 150hz for a 1.1 meter tall enclosures, i do not think i have ever seen resonances half of that.
 
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