Copy pasta because I don't feel like typing to paraphrase.
I prefer larger as opposed to smaller when it comes to sealed box volume. You do not increase power handling by putting a woofer in a smaller box. All you do is roll it off at a higher frequency. To produce a certain output level at a certain frequency, you must move a certain amount of air. There is no magic in a smaller box that enables it to have more low frequency output without bottoming the cone. If you move your woofer to a smaller box and find it no longer bottoms out on you then this is because it also does not play as low as it did in the larger box and because it's less efficient, not because you have increased it’s power handling. ( A larger box has a more gradual roll off on the low end) Yes, you can now play a particular track louder than before without bottoming so perhaps you have increased, “apparent power handling” but the real fact of the matter is that your smaller box is acting as a high pass filter not to mention that it has reduced efficiency. What’s worse is that you have also increased the total Q or “Qtc” of the system. It’s a much better thing to leave a woofer in a larger box and address the bottoming issue with more appropriate methods. The larger box will have better efficiency, and better damping. When you increase the restoring force by making the box smaller you just make the amplifiers job of controlling the cone motion all that much harder. The same is true for drivers with a very small Vas. While the Thiele Small parameters suggest proper damping and performance in a small box, the real performance is not the same. These compact systems don’t take up much space but they have a lot of difficulty resolving detail in bass. It’s what I call the, “one note fits all” sound. Seems like no matter what note is played, you get a lot of content of that one note that the tight restoring force likes to play.
