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I'm no expert in this, but my understanding is that even a ported enclosure won't have enough group delay to be audible under normal conditions. If two periods is the threshold of audibility, at 60Hz you'd need 32ms of delay, which would be huge.

My knowledge of speakers & drivers is sketchy at best, but everything I've ever read on the subject reveals that virtually every aspect of the design is - and must be - a trade off or compromise at virtually every design stage.

Or you can just make the enclosure bigger. Given that portability is not an issue for studio monitors, I've always wondered why mid-priced nearfields are so small, typically barely big enough to accommodate the woofer. Seems like bass extension could be improved greatly at little cost just by not insisting on a minimal footprint.