Ported or Sealed Box for Techno???

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

For people that actually understand tuning and not just read numbers, it does make sense. And to however many people have said that techno is not represented and mixed in a fashion where their can be a sufficient soundstage... that is not the case in a good number of albums. A lot of DJ's will put out something that is loud and hit hard. Most local DJ's are going to have that style. There are a few DJ's out there though that actually care about sound quality. Take Adagio For Strings by Tiesto. Probably his most widely known track. I listen to those on my monitors and it fills the soundstage PLENTY.

Im not familiar with the artist you are talking about. Does he have a band, or does he do it all digitally, as someone suggested earlier?

 

[bballer123 10+ year member]

I would assume he does it all digitally just like most artists nowadays. The difference is, he does not lay track over track like most all DJ's. What genre of music would appeal to you the most?

 

[joetama 5,000+ posts]

Well.....Someone else correct me if I say anything incorrect here.. BUT..as far as I've been taught, this is how it goes...
If you tune a box to say 32Hz...When the woofer is playing a 32 hz note, the cone has the most stability at that point...And from what I've been told, generally anywhere within 10hz of that tuning, the cone is going to be in pretty much complete control UNTIL it hits X-MAX.

With a SEALED box...there isnt a specified Tuning...SO there is better control over the whole SUB frequency spectrum as far as the motor goes, BUT it doesnt have as strong as a peak as a ported box...hence why Ported boxes get louder.....( I know that was kinda confusing)

You can tune a ported box to have no peak in the response (virtually no peak you get a peak even with sealed enclosures). A ported box gets louder because it uses a column of air to act almost as another driver. It just simply uses the reverse energy of the cone to create useful acoustic gain. Think about it like this, in a sealed box a driver has a roll off point that is determined by the size of the box and the driver. There is not much that a designer can do to control the roll off frequency. However, in a ported box the designer as a lot more control on where and how much response will roll off. Using this control a designer could actually build a flatter response box with a ported design...

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

I would assume he does it all digitally just like most artists nowadays. The difference is, he does not lay track over track like most all DJ's. What genre of music would appeal to you the most?

If he does it digitally, ie synthesizers and/or computers, how can there be a 'sound stage'? Where is the drummer sitting? Where is the bass guitarist standing? Can you perceive the vocalist moving across the stage during the recording? No, you cannot, your digitally created techno music has none of that. Its missing too many spacial cues to be used for SQ tweaking.
The closet digitally created sound liek that has to spaical projection is in the form of artificially created stereo sweeps, side to side etc. An extremely elementary trick that even simple systems can reproduce coherantly.

That is not a knock on techno, heck I like to blast it now and again. But it simply is not a good form of music for "SQ". I like alot of rap, but id say the exact same thing about it too.

What genre of music appeals most to me is not what I am talking about.

 

[joetama 5,000+ posts]

If he does it digitally, ie synthesizers and/or computers, how can there be a 'sound stage'? Where is the drummer sitting? Where is the bass guitarist standing? Can you perceive the vocalist moving across the stage during the recording? No, you cannot, your digitally created techno music has none of that. Its missing too many spacial cues to be used for SQ tweaking.
The closet digitally created sound liek that has to spaical projection is in the form of artificially created stereo sweeps, side to side etc. An extremely elementary trick that even simple systems can reproduce coherantly.

That is not a knock on techno, heck I like to blast it now and again. But it simply is not a good form of music for "SQ". I like alot of rap, but id say the exact same thing about it too.

What genre of music appeals most to me is not what I am talking about.

I don't think you understand how recordings today are made. Bands/artists don't sit the entire band in a room with one microphone and call it a day, unless you are listening to bluegrass or another form of music where they still adhere to music old recording traditions. A lot of the time artists will be in completely different rooms. The reason that they do this is so that the mix engineer can mix the instrument with out having bleed over from another instrument. IE it is hard to mix a vocal inside a small room with an electric guitar behind it playing full tilt.

Guitar, bass, drums, vocals are placed where you hear them by the mix engineer and producer. You are correct that some Techno doesn't have good imaging and a lot of the time just uses hard pan effects. This is either done because the artist doesn't have the skill or knowledge to do this or there is no point to since the music will be played in a club or venue where stereo imaging is not a top priority.

If you don't believe electronic music can not have good imaging or sound stage I think you should go out and buy the following albums.

Prodigy - Fat of the Land

The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom

NIN - Pretty Hate Machine/Downward Spiral/With Teeth

 

[mile098 10+ year member]

nice discussion but i dont think uve answered the guys question...

if the drivers EBP is less then 50 it goes in a sealed box, if between 50 and a 100 can go both ways >100 in a ported one...type r can go both ways i believe and although the sealed enclosure is somewhat quiter IMHO i think it would 'follow' the technos punchy base better then a ported one...yes u may tune a ported a bit higher but the results arent the same, it sound too shallow...at least for my ears

 

[joetama 5,000+ posts]

I always knew it as this:

0-50 Sealed

50-90 Flexible (either)

90+ Ported.

To be honest with techno I think you would be much better off going with a ported enclosure. Ported enclosures don't sound 'shallow' at all. If you have heard on that sounds shallow it must have been designed incorrectly.

Techno has a lot of low frequency notes in it. If you used a ported box tuned low (depending on the subwoofer) you would have a stronger bass response for those notes. IMO...

 

[mile098 10+ year member]

i didnt mean that ported boxes sound shalow in general but that the basslines on techno are higher then rap or r'n'b etc and if u wanna tune your box low(30-35 Hz) techno response wont be that great, and ported boxes tuned to 50-60 Hz sound too shallow for my liking..i tried it, it wasnt that great for me, the bass just so seems out of place..