Front ported monitors better for small rooms?

No I don't think it will help a lot.


Porting... if done right, is about tuning the resonance of the cabinet so that the driver (woofer) thinks it is in a bigger cabinet. This has the effect of flattening out the bass response, often times allowing the designer to extend the hi pass filters lower... so you get deeper flatter bass response.

More importantly, porting reduces the bass boink that happens when you shove a speaker into a non ported cabinet that is less than ideal size. 

Porting... if done right, doesn't have a jet rush of air flying out it... it has spring of air firmly coupling with your room.

Porting... if done right, does not result in sound "escaping" from the port in any great excess.

Technically speaking bass frequencies emanate from your speaker cabinet in near omni pattern... any low frequencies coming out of the port is swallowed by that.


Bad porting can result in overall weird frequency response. Bad porting can result in the sound of wind coming and going from the port.


Porting is done to make to make speaker drivers more valuable when they are placed in boxes that are smaller than ideal for said speaker.

Very few people screw up the easiest part about building and adding value to a speaker... designing a good port.

I suspect the 155hZ is just part of your room and you'll need to trap it.

best regards,
mike

SvenArne

  ...the problem is being unable to get the rear-ported Dynos far enough from the rear wall without the listening position ending up near the middle of the squarish room.
 
 
Sven

I think you're right - that this is the main source of the problem.  No amount of room-treatment is going to correct a port booming low freq a foot or less away from a wall.

If you can't reposition the monitors, then yes you will likely need to switch to front-ported.  Of course, if you can, borrow a pair of front-ported just to confirm.   Maybe the store will let you take them on a trial basis. 

Good luck.

Just speaking about ported monitors in general, they are not so much used for referencing audio signals because the port allows the speaker to move more and you will notice elongated bass notes or "fuller" sounding bass... that is specifically what the port is doing is opening the ability for that larger frequency to be recreated due to it being in a smaller box as Mike said.

The reason they were never that popular until recent times was because a closed cabinet will give you a "true" sense of response versus the "enhanced" response you get from a ported speaker....  To me this is like adjusting the low end of an EQ and adding it to your speakers instead of EQ-ing the sound source itself.

If you used an RTA and RTA tuned microphone and the low end was flat... it is not the room unless you were placing the RTA microphone close to the speaker itself...

Try placing it in the mix position... then listen to both speakers with pink noise... then look at the response... now mute the right side and see if adding both speakers is causing a boost in that frequency.. if that is the case you are creating a boost unintentionally with phase from your Left to Right speaker.. if that is whats happening then see if you can move one side (left or right) further away or closer to you to see if it goes away. If you RTA the mixing position and the response is showing a boost at that frequency.. then it iss either 1. the speakers response or 2. the room.

Just some trouble shooting steps for you to try.

"I tried this on my old monitors at the suggestion of the manufacturer, and to my surprise it noticeably leveled out the bass response and resulted in better mixes."

I suggest that this is positive proof that those ports were not well designed... and suggest further that your experience with these ports is not the norm when working with better designed samples.

Have you ever heard of a Aeperiodic Vent?

You made one with your sock. :-)

An Aeperiodic vent is a device that speaker builders sometimes use to either prototype or rescue speaker projects. It is essentially a port stuffed with a sock to fix problems with low frequency resonance.



You can buy some here:

https://www.madisound.com...5&products_id=1323

I guess I was and am optimistic that the Dynaudio BM5A is a well designed speaker.

If I thought the ports on my speakers were a problem... I'd start shopping for new speakers.

all the best,
mike

 

If I am not mistaken they (Adam A7's) are around $500 a pop right? or is that a pair?

I just recommended other speakers on a different thread:

How about these... space saving in-wall mounted THX certified:

http://www.abt.com/produc...l?utm_source=scfroogle

You can find them new in a box on Ebay for $450/each( http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eB...&item=170525142275 ).  I believe best buy and circuit city carry some of the klipsch stuff so you can always go listen to some of them and compare them to other major manufactures such as Bose and JBL.

They also make these and you can find them for $250/each(Probably need a sub):

http://www.buy.com/prod/k...loc/111/208504475.html

Just food for thought

SvenArne


Thanks for the responses guys!

I can borrow the older model ADAM A7 so I'll try probably that, but after reading some your replies I'm not too optimistic. I know I should stuff more and better bass trapping in there, but then I'll lose valueable space for storage and furniture and stuff.  

Sven

Definitely try the Adam A7's if you can . . . one of the things I like about them is that IMO the bass end isn't hyped like it is in a lot of the smaller ported monitors and this might help your situation.  


I rented a smallish attic room once and the roof angle (and shape) made it virtually impossible to get the same balance out of each HiFi speaker.  I certainly would not have liked to have tried some critical listening in there!  

Luckily not all attics are created equal, and hopefully yours is a lot better than that one, so good luck in getting your sound sorted in there.


Andy