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In reference to:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=1414

I had recently a guy in my listening room and he asked me if it would be possible to get the 300Hz range in the way how it sounds in my room but without using those larger upper bass horns.

I was laughing and replayed that THAT was what the whole game all about. I do not know any ways to reduce upper-bass, or what Clark called “the melody range”, properly besides a straight radiation horn with a small throat when the horn do not load as a direct radiator even an octave or two before the “the melody range”. Still…, the narrow throated, straight, upper-bass is a big and in many instances not manageable. So, if anything out there could compete with what a horns does with upper bass? Let pretend that the horn loading does not exist, then what would be the next in succession line?

Ironically, among all enclosures and topologies that I have heard I found that a properly done bass-reflex enclosures can do the  “the melody range” quite adequately. What, the ported speakers? Are you out of your mind, Romy? This what you are proposing after the years of bitching about the “ported sound”? Yes, I do. Here is what I mean….

If a port is properly implemented then the port might do a phenomenally good upper-bass, almost as good as a “horn-loaded” upper-bass horn. The problem is that NO ONE uses the ported design properly. If do not let the ported design to go all the way down and to cut off the channel very slightly lower then the port begin to EQ the bass then it is possible to get a very-very good Sound using the bass-reflex enclosure. Paradoxically the driver in this case should be not really “ported” and an extra one or two LF channels would be mandatory for the lower octaves but with all those incontinences we gain “quality” of sound… using a port. A typical cut off of a bass-reflex enclosure in order to work properly should be somewhere around 110Hz-180 Hz and it done so then the “ported sound” does not manifest itself at all. Quite in contrary, the properly done bass-reflex might be very live, very dynamic and very musical.  Listen for instance the Wilson Alexandria’s high- passed upper bass – it absolutely extraordinary but let the speaker run full-range and the Alexandria’s ported lower and mid-bass will screw everything up. The only one problem that I can see with properly done port channels that they are effective only in a VERY narrow bandwidth. Bring frequencies too low and the noise form the port compromises the entire “melody range”. Bring it too high that the driver being to sound like an open baffle….

I did not see anyone even tried to do what I proposed above commercially. There was an old model of Kharma Audiocratique that had two bass sections; one of them was sealed another was ported:

The Kharma sentiment was correct but it unfortunately was not done properly: the ported channel went too low and the sealed channel was too week – a wrong driver and not enough volume of enclosure. Still it is the only one known to me commercial attempt to deal with the ported upper bass in more sensible way then it done usually.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

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