Originally Posted by
RythmikAudio
Ported vs sealed is just a general guideline. It does not mean sealed subs always sound tighter than ported subs. Some sealed subs are just downright boomy. Your Sierra-2 is also ported. Does that make it less good than a selaed version? Do we suggest customers to plug the port to make it sealed? No. Dave had spend a lot of time to get the frequency response to the damping setting that he think is neutral. The decision of ported vs sealed also affects efficiency. In short, the debate btw sealed and ported goes beyond just labelling. What we need is find out what you really like.
Dave suggest FV15 becasue you mention the output is not enough. So we assume you just need more output and assume you play pretty loud. If you don't play loud, you can just boost the sub volume and that should give you the output. Another question is when you had F12, had you experimented with different damping setting and found what you liked? High damping sound of FV15HP is similar to the mid damping of our F15HP/F12. If you like the "full body" bass of F12 in mid damping or even low damping, then FV15HP or ported subs can actually give you that and at the same time plays 9db louder. It has this flexible damping control. You can create the type of bass sound you'd like.
Lastly, the midbass kick. I know you have said that is not what you are really after. But I think it may be and you just didn't realize. I once went to a demo of PA subwoofer and found that kick drum bass were much stronger and impressive. But as I listened more, I can tell the sound does not have the detail that we normally hear get from a home system. In addition, the midbass is so strong that it has become one-note and lack of texture detail. It is a euphonic form of one-note bass. The way to create that type of sound is 1) cut out low bass becasue low bass not only takes power and less audible, it distracts your brain as unnecessary nuances/background noise that you don't really care, and 2) boost midbass. Midbass is far more audible than low bass. Strong midbass fools a lot of listeners into thinking they hear more bass. To take advantage of that fact, there is a patent from SRS on how to make small subwoofers sound big bass. The trick is to intentionally create a lot of harmonic distortions in the midbass frequency range. The second trick speaker designers use when the bass is limited is to make the roll-off contour low damping. Low damping has a hump in FR before it starts to roll off. So on our F12, if you pick 28hz, then you almost want to use low damping. Again that is a trick to give you one note bass because low damping has more ringing.