I Have owned my Ascends now for 3 weeks. Prior to my purchase I did my research, and noticed at least in my price range $500. dollars or less that the vast majority of speakers are bass reflex design. Not so long ago this was not the case. Most designs were Acoustic Suspension. Why has this happened? The biggest names in bass reflex design back then (1970's) was JBL, Altec Lansing, and Cerwin Vega. These speakers were sometimes referred to as the "West Coast Sound'. Speakers like Advent,and AR were referred to as "East Coast Sound", and were Acoustic Suspension design.

Bass reflex designed speakers were also considered highly efficient. It was a selling point. I f you had a low powered amp you could get a big sound using bass reflex speakers. This no longer seems to the case. Today they are no more efficient than acoustic suspension.


While the reflex design speakers have tremendously improved and are very very impressive. I use to consider this design to be nothing more than a big boom box, not well designed and often poorly executed.
Today this is no longer the case.

Out of the 20 or so speakers I auditioned maybe 2 were of sealed design.
So my questions are,
Why is the reflex design so dominant, (at least in the price range I'm looking at).
Are there any advantages left to this design over acoustic suspension.