Well, we can say with absolute certainty that air exchange will keep the cabinet internals cooler than a sealed box.
That particular EAW cabinet might be fine without air exchange. I don't know, I've never pulled one apart before.
The biggest source of heat (the LF drivers, direct-radiating) are operated over a very narrow bandwidth, and where the impedance will be pretty high. ie, might not be much heat.
I can also say that porting a cabinet won't always save the drivers from heat. I had a pair of Fane Sov.Pro 12-500s in some ported boxes. Four ports on the front of the cabinet, arranged in a square around the driver. I'd also installed a single shorter port on the back, which shorted out the front-facing ports by raising the tuning frequency. The shorter port could be blocked for when a lower tuning frequency was needed.
After a couple of hours on the end of an NU6000 running 100Hz-1kHz for live rock 'n' roll, the drivers had got so hot they'd lost 6dB of sensitivity. Putting my hand inside the port, the back of the magnet was hot to the touch. The air inside the cabinet wasn't noticeably warm, though.
It wasn't particularly loud (a single Beyma 15P1200Nd did fine for bass), and the NU6000 (1200w/ch into 8ohm) was theoretically well-matched to the 12" drivers (500w AES @8ohm), and the drivers had lots of ventilation. They still suffered from severe power compression.
So, ports will probably help, but they won't save you from drivers with crappy thermal design. Not long after, I moved to 2x Faital 10FH520 per side, and haven't looked back.
Chris
That particular EAW cabinet might be fine without air exchange. I don't know, I've never pulled one apart before.
The biggest source of heat (the LF drivers, direct-radiating) are operated over a very narrow bandwidth, and where the impedance will be pretty high. ie, might not be much heat.
I can also say that porting a cabinet won't always save the drivers from heat. I had a pair of Fane Sov.Pro 12-500s in some ported boxes. Four ports on the front of the cabinet, arranged in a square around the driver. I'd also installed a single shorter port on the back, which shorted out the front-facing ports by raising the tuning frequency. The shorter port could be blocked for when a lower tuning frequency was needed.
After a couple of hours on the end of an NU6000 running 100Hz-1kHz for live rock 'n' roll, the drivers had got so hot they'd lost 6dB of sensitivity. Putting my hand inside the port, the back of the magnet was hot to the touch. The air inside the cabinet wasn't noticeably warm, though.
It wasn't particularly loud (a single Beyma 15P1200Nd did fine for bass), and the NU6000 (1200w/ch into 8ohm) was theoretically well-matched to the 12" drivers (500w AES @8ohm), and the drivers had lots of ventilation. They still suffered from severe power compression.
So, ports will probably help, but they won't save you from drivers with crappy thermal design. Not long after, I moved to 2x Faital 10FH520 per side, and haven't looked back.
Chris
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