Rear firing vs downward firing vs front firing

[sidvee]

I have heard and had/have rear/front ported speakers, but I have never heard a downward firing design. Can anyone who owns this type of design describe how the lower bass frequencies react in the room.
1. Do they boom if moved too close to room boundaries?
2. Is the bass well differentiated like good resolution of a drum kit vs bass guitar?
Any other observation of bass quality.
TIA.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[Hari Iyer]

I have heard and had/have rear/front ported speakers, but I have never heard a downward firing design. Can anyone who owns this type of design describe how the lower bass frequencies react in the room.
1. Do they boom if moved too close to room boundaries?
2. Is the bass well differentiated like good resolution of a drum kit vs bass guitar?
Any other observation of bass quality.
TIA.
Cheers,
Sid

I had a TQWT design a Meteronome DIY speaker with a bottom opening. There was no port though, but the TQWT line had some moderate to heavy damping with polyfill. So it was more of an over stuffed TQWT and hence also behaved like an aperiodic box for low frequency. As there was not much energy in the low frequencies and the full-range driver was working like an acoustic suspension. Due to this having a bottom opening did not have much impact on resonance or boom. But the low frequency extension was quite good with a -3db around 45hz which was tight and articulate. I am not aware how a bass reflex with a bottom port may sound though.