I've gotten a bit curious about this after reading all of these posts. My sub is a sealed design, and I was wondering what people thought of those. When I was shopping for subs, lo these many years ago, I found the sealed sub to be more--I hate to use this term--musical, and with a better punch. As a bonus, no port chuff! (no, I haven't tried it with that goblin scene yet). On the other hand, it's fairly sensitive to placement. I must disagree with Frenchlop and JohnK about reflections overamplifying the bass; I found the sub to be far too much when it was in a corner, no matter how much I turned it down. Anyway, what do you guys think?

The jury is out with me on whether sealed or ported is inherently better, but I think it really comes down to design in either case. I found a page with some good basic info on the two designs here.

DIYsubwoofers.com also has some great info:
This link is about sealed designs
This link is about ported designs

Remember how much we loved the sealed Hales Revelation 2s?

I would love to hear a sealed sub myself.
Monitor Audio has a nice one.

Ken,

I don't think either the sealed or ported designs are inherently better than the other. One can make a great sub or a crappy one, using either designs. However, my take is, for a given set of specs for bass frequency extension and maximum low-distortion SPL, the sealed designs tend to cost more. In other words, if I were hunting for an under-$1K sub, I would be looking mostly at the ported designs (simply, there seems to be no great sealed subs in this price range). But if I were to buy a $3K sub, I would seriously look at the sealed subs, too.

Do you know of any examples of the "great" sealed subs off the top of your head? I've just gotta be different!

The Velodyne HGS series II are certainly one of such "great" sealed subs.

Monitor Audio has one similar to the HGS12, their FB212.
I don't know much about its 'greatness' but it certainly looks interesting.

Hmm. What does "vented" mean? Looks nice...

vented pole piece, you mean? I think ir refers to the fact that air can flow in and out of the voice coil area from behind while the cone moves back and forth.

Oops, never mind. I read further on the page. I'm no longer sure the sub is a sealed design. It appears that the drivers themselves are completely internal, but how can a sub be both "vented" and "sealed" at the same time? They also mention lack of chuffing. This is a non-issue with sealed designs, isn't it?

Here is a link to various subwoofer designs.
The push pull isobaric is shown near the bottom.