Do you prefer rear ported, front ported cabs or sealed bass cabs?

[ctmullins]

What you’re not understanding, is ….

Ah, gotcha!

 

[tvbop]

@tvbop: When you said "boom and mud", were your referring to room resonances that have to be dealt with (often made more convenient because the sealed cab is already rolled of in the lows), or were you blaming ported cabs (almost all of them) for sounding worse than sealed down there?

I play a P bass with dead chromes. last thing I want is all that dry mid range bark to be swamped by too much low bass. I like my mid range grind to cut thru the floor. Seen way to many bands with that soft boomy bass tone that just floods the sound stage with to many unwanted frequencies. A sealed cab removes a lot of the lows and makes equing the mids so much easier.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

One kind of cab we haven't mentioned is "vented" (some ported cabs are called vented but that isn't what I mean). An example is a HIWATT 4x12 with a .5"x17" slot at the bottom rear, which I've read wasn't designed with the porting theory in mind.

The cab probably does resonate at some freq, but this narrow slot might have too much air resistance to function well as a port, so the damping (I think) should be high, so the difference (I think) between above vs below resonance should be small. So maybe the lowest freqs aren't ruined, but I guess it's a compromise. Seems like it could be regulated by blocking some of that slot.

It might just sound a little more open than a sealed cab, relieving or releasing that "pent up grunt" sound (of course I don't mean that negatively).

 

[Rip Van Dan]

I'm sure that this has been asked here before, but I'm curious what type of cabs people here on Talkbass prefer - Rear Ported, Front Ported or Sealed cabs - and why??

Thanks for your input!

I entirely use ported cabs, and although I have had cabs with a rear port before, all the ones I have now are ported in the front. The first ported cab that I bought was in 1971 when I bought a Standel MCIIb/SAM30b piggy-back amp. It was a powered 215 cab with a bass reflex design and 4 round ports mounted vertically to the left of the speakers. That amp was a monster! I'd been playing with a 1966 Bassman amp (a sealed 212 cab with the large cabinet) that I bought new in 1966 and was getting buried at our latest venue because the guitarist and keys had just bought 120-watt rms Vox Super Beatle amps. I couldn't turn that Bassman above #7 on the dial without farting out the Jensen Speakers and kept getting told to turn up when I had it as high up as it would without blowing the speakers. So next day I went into town (Lincoln, NE) and bought this Standel amp.

I turned it up half way and the folks on the back wall of this 900+ occupancy room put their hands over their ears. I had to turn it down to #3 on the dial (9 o'clock) so I didn't drown everyone else out. These ports really pushed a lot of air out of them. If I stood within 3 or 4 feet of them while it was turned up to #3, it would flap my bell bottoms. And there was no such thing as causing any distortion in these speakers either. I never had trouble being heard after I bought that amp.

Pic below is from late 1971 or early 1972. That's my Standel behind me next to Steve's (RIP) Super Beatle amp.

I don't really care if a cab is ported or not though. I care how it sounds. It's just that in my experience, the ported cabs have sounded better. So, with my limited experience with sealed cabs, I'm skeptical about sealed cabs when I hear someone say how good they are. Typically they don't go as low as ported cabs do and all the cabs I've used that have a nicely focused and low bottom end have been ported cabs.

Even my small venue cab is a ported cab. It's an Eden EX-112 only goes down to 42Hz, but still the bottom end sounds great.

Then my main cabs are a DNS-210, as seen on top of the stack, and the DNS-410, which in the picture below is just being a very expensive amp stand - only played through the 210 that night. The DNS-210 goes down to 34Hz and the DNS-410 goes down to 37Hz. Both of those have just the best bottom end I've ever played through. Both cabs have flared and textured shelf ports under the speakers.

Still, if there's a sealed cab that is reputed to sound better, I'd certainly give it a fair shot. I've just been using ported cabs quite happily since 1971 (for the last 43-years). So my preference would be front ported cabs.

 

[Drredplate]

IMO no difference in front or rear ported.
Sealed cabs sound tighter and more controlled with better transients.
Also sealed cabs tend to be smaller.
I like both types so no strong preference
The key thing is good cab design

 

[rodl2005]

Sealed.

But DO care, and use sealed or front ported depending upon the gig. And amp.
But mostly it's dependent on the cab's design

My 2 sealed cabs are both Bergantino brand. NV215 and HG410
My 2 front ported cabs are Fender Bassman 115s, which, without the tweeter on, sound imo, like old school 15s
Tubby, round and handle a good deal of power.

 

[tubedude]

Sealed.

There's something about the response of a good sealed cab that I haven't found in the ported cabs that I've played.

For me, sealed cabs have a tighter response. No sloppy, loose lows. OTOH, ported designs allow lower response with a smaller cabinet and lower weight. As we age that becomes a variable with greater influence over fidelity.

 

[ajkula66]

As we age that becomes a variable with greater influence over fidelity.

Indeed. Thankfully I don't gig anymore so most of my amps/cabs live in the studio...and I wasn't even the one who had to carry them upstairs...

 

[tubedude]

Indeed. Thankfully I don't gig anymore so most of my amps/cabs live in the studio...and I wasn't even the one who had to carry them upstairs...

There should be a layers commercial :
"If you or a loved one suffered a back injury from loading Ampeg 8x10" cabs you may be entitled to compensation and chiropractic care."

 

[Pedulla-Player]

Wow, this tread was resurrected from the dead. Informative information. Thanks for sharing.

 

[agedhorse]

For me, sealed cabs have a tighter response. No sloppy, loose lows. OTOH, ported designs allow lower response with a smaller cabinet and lower weight. As we age that becomes a variable with greater influence over fidelity.

Ported cabinets don’t have to have sloppy, loose lows. It depends on the intent and skill of the designer.

 

[tubedude]

Ported cabinets don’t have to have sloppy, loose lows. It depends on the intent and skill of the designer.

Agreed, unfortunately many ported cabs have been made without the knowledge you possess, or had other requirements or compromises that made for suboptimal execution.

 

[Lo-E]

I don’t care.

What I DO care about is how the cabinet sounds but I don’t care one bit how the designer got there. I’ve heard great examples of each. All my current cabs are ported (only one is rear ported) but that’s not by design on my part. I just bought things that sounded good to me.

 

[Al Kraft]

IMO/IME there are so many variables in the cab design trade-space that picking just one (any one) is not often going to tell much of an "entire story". Admittedly a 1" speaker, regardless of port or no port, isn't likely going to fill an auditorium with deep bass...so some single parameters might tell a lot of the story, but these are mostly extreme data points IME.

FWIW my AK C112T s can operate sealed or with various amounts of venting (4 rear ports I can open individually). In this case I don't have to choose between having only a sealed or ported cab.

At the end of the day though, I just want a cab that sounds good to me for my use cases. How the designer gets there is frequently something to admire, but much less important to me than the result.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

Evidently, *no matter how skilled the designer*, the voice of a ported cab changes for the worse somewhere below cab resonance (unless maybe the ports are so restrictive that they aren't producing the positives *or* negatives of porting, like a leaky sealed cab).

But if a ported cab is tuned below the fundamental of the lowest note you intend to play, then you would probably never hear that transition (above vs below). Very, very few cabs intended for electric bass are tuned that low.

Very few of us have heard a ported cab tuned below 41Hz (or below 31Hz) - in our own rig - though most of us have heard it from a good club sound system. A fully, correctly formed low E is so beautiful.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

Optional reading material (I had observed this five years earlier and had documented it here, but **forgot** (crying because I blew so much money)):

I had two nice sounding 1x15s, but I wasn't happy with low E (like some of you posters above), and tried plugging one port (to tune it lower), or both ports (making it sealed, but the driver probably wasn't suitable). I liked them better with one port blocked, but couldn't decide between plugging one or both. This continued for a while, just mildly dissatisfied.

Then I kept reading about a popular ported 2x15 that was repeatedly described as "the best bass cab I've ever heard" (either the 1x15 or the 2x15), and I bought that, expecting it to be the end of my problems with low E (because I had forgotten what I had figured out earlier, as I said). But it wasn't. Then I tried blocking *its* ports (but I'm no expert), with uncertain results, and this continued for some time.

Then I did a "rice test" on that cabinet, and reducing the frequency from above to below cabinet resonance, there is was, that change of voice. Later, now knowing what this sounded like, I heard it while playing low E on the bass (while stepping from A1 down to open E); now I can't "unhear" it.

So, a little angry about this (because it had also been described as "almost FRFR" (either the 1x15 or the 2x15)), and stumbling at random into a thread here about a new line of cabs that are tuned *below* 41Hz, I bought one of those, and it *was* the solution, from the first moment I heard it.

I should have tried retuning the other cabs, but the drivers are not necessarily suitable (and I lack expertise and am too old to learn it now).

I will eventually get tired of telling this story. Thank you for listening.

 

[Passinwind]

But if a ported cab is tuned below the fundamental of the lowest note you intend to play, then you would probably never hear that transition (above vs below). Very, very few cabs intended for electric bass are tuned that low.

Very few of us have heard a ported cab tuned below 41Hz (or below 31Hz) - in our own rig - though most of us have heard it from a good club sound system. A fully, correctly formed low E is so beautiful.

Lots of fEARful builders actually have heard that, for starters. It takes Greenboy's extended port shelf mod to get there, but plenty of us have done that. And as usual, there's no free lunch, and we lose some higher bass output in compensation. With other cab designs the tradeoffs can easily skew in other ways, but there are always tradeoffs.

IME and IMO, many many players will not share your preference once they hear the tradeoffs, but I definitely do in quite a few specific cases, and not at all in others.

 

[agedhorse]

Correct, a cabinet with extended response may not be the “ideal” for many players, I would even say most players.

Since there are many very successful players out there using (and preferring) cabinets without extended low frequency response, I think you are missing the much bigger picture.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

I heard you two about tradeoffs, thank you.

@tubedude criticized the lows of typical ported cabs, and @agedhorse replied "It depends on the intent and skill of the designer".

My testimony is that, even if the designer's skills are maximal, without question, if his *intent* is to provide what most bass players want, and if that leaves low E audibly in the condition that I described, then I choose a different balance of tradeoffs, myself: ported tuned below 41Hz, or sealed.
My fridge makes a low E, without this defect, that is conveniently already rolled off (for those who don't want or don't need to hear that). Of course, smaller sealed cabs exist for those mortals who don't want to sound "larger than life".

 

[Passinwind]

I heard you two about tradeoffs, thank you.

@tubedude criticized the lows of typical ported cabs, and @agedhorse replied "It depends on the intent and skill of the designer".

My testimony is that, even if the designer's skills are maximal, without question, if his *intent* is to provide what most bass players want, and if that leaves low E audibly in the condition that I described, then I choose a different balance of tradeoffs, myself: ported tuned below 41Hz, or sealed.
My fridge makes a low E, without this defect, that is conveniently already rolled off (for those who don't want or don't need to hear that). Of course, smaller sealed cabs exist for those mortals who don't want to sound "larger than life".

Oh, like the ones who actually want to get regular paid work?

Not snark at all, and I am as contrarian as they come. I absolutely loathe the fridge sounds and feel for my own wants and needs but greatly enjoy what many others get out of them. My go-to 112 cab has three port tunings available and 50Hz gets the most love by far. My last two 115 DIY builds were tuned at 41Hz, and won a few TB shootouts pretty handily, if relatively uncolored low low end was the primary imperative. But then I got a fretted five string bass, and building even bigger and heavier things lost the shine for me. Might pay to remember my buddy Duke LeJeune's motto: "only immortal for a short time." Or this guy's famous quote in the Star Trek pilot: "may your illusions be as pleasant."