Port chuffing remedies...............

Polkaguy58

I've always prefered sealed speakers myself, but they tend to need larger enclosures for good bass and I have limited realestate for a listening area.
I've tried in the past to either block off ports or stuff them with fiberfill or porous foam bungs to quell the port noise.
Tonight, I had an idea (oh oh) and thought about trying a rolled up cut strip of green ScotchBrite (pot scrubbers).
It's more rigid than foam and the pores are much bigger.
I figured that it should break up the turbulence, but not restrict the woofers from moving as much.
I have to say, that I think I might have something here.
I really like what it did to the bass of my KEF q10's.

Nightfall

The remedy is easy. Passive radiator.

BlueFox

What the heck is ‘chuffing’?

Nightfall

Port noise.

BlueFox

Okay. Thanks. It’s defined online as ‘a sound of or like the exhaust of a steam engine.’, and wasn’t sure how that applied to a stereo.

Viking64

BlueFox wrote: »

What the heck is ‘chuffing’?

I don't know, so I'll guess it involves bleach, a glass tube, and a raccoon in his mid-30s.

BlueFox

Viking64 wrote: »

BlueFox wrote: »

What the heck is ‘chuffing’?

I don't know, so I'll guess it involves bleach, a glass tube, and a raccoon in his mid-30s.

That is Friday night for some members.

lightman1

BlueFox wrote: »

Viking64 wrote: »

BlueFox wrote: »

What the heck is ‘chuffing’?

I don't know, so I'll guess it involves bleach, a glass tube, and a raccoon in his mid-30s.

That is Friday night for some members.

Yup. Thanks for noticing, Bud!

BlueFox

LOL. No problemo Russ.

joecoulson

No Jim, it’s what you get when roller blading in hot weather.

westmassguy

You can also try relocating the port to the rear of the speaker.

mhardy6647

Note that stuffing anything into the port will alter the tuning -- whether significantly or subtly, or for better or worse, depends on the exact circumstances, of course. I reckon the use of a Scotchbrite pad converts the enclosure alignment from bass reflex to an aperiodic vent (a la the Dynaco A-25 and its kin).

What kind of loudspeakers are you having Portnoy's port noise issues with, @Polkaguy58 ? Most decent sized and carefully designed/built loudspeakers have minimal such issues (if any). IME only small cabinets tuned to fairly high enclosure resonances (e.g., the ported morphs of the Radio Shack/Optimus/RCA "Minimus 7" speakers, with tiny ports) exhibit such issues to an audible extent.

Also -- not sure why @Polkaguy58 says that sealed loudspeakers "tend to need larger enclosures for good bass". Villchur and his colleagues developed the low Fs, high compliance woofers and acoustic suspension alignments precisely to permit the generation of deep, well-damped, extended, and flat bass from a small enclosure! The AR-3 (e.g.) is not a large loudspeaker, but it is capable of generating prodigious amounts of high-quality, deep bass if fed adequate power. It is true that an infinite baffle (which is a large sealed enclosure that does not use the alignment parameters of an acoustic suspension enclosure) generally requires a large enclosure to achieve a low f3, but the acoustic suspension alignments were developed precisely to miniaturize the enclosure needed for good bass -- albeit at the expense of sensitivity.

Maybe it depends on what one considers large(r)...

Polkaguy58

In my case, larger is anything over 9" wide and about a foot tall.
I really have a small room and only sit about 6' away from my speakers.
They're spaced about the same distance, so the smaller the cabinet, the farther the distance I can get between the tweeters.
That was one of the good things about the SVS towers, they were skinny and had the tweeters mirror imaged.
I actually got the ScotchBrite idea from watching a video about Dynaco A-25's.
A lot of high end speakers actually come with foam port bungs, so I must not be the only one who's thought of messing with ports.

mhardy6647

Ever try a pair of AR-4x, AR-6, or AR-7? Or the Teledyne-era AR-18, for that matter?
No ports, no chuffs, no errors.

AR18 2 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

So -- what loudspeaker did you treat with Scotchbrite pads to ameliorate chuffing?

Polkaguy58

They're KEF Q10's and perhaps the term chuffing is too dramatic, it's not so much the sound of turbulent air, as just a boominess emenating from the port.
I guess my ears prefer non-ported speakers.
I think the "port filter" more than likely acts as a gentle air brake, which to me, seems to tighten up the bass a bit.

skrol

Viking64 wrote: »

BlueFox wrote: »

What the heck is ‘chuffing’?

I don't know, so I'll guess it involves bleach, a glass tube, and a raccoon in his mid-30s.

I thought that was huffing

K_M

Polkaguy58 wrote: »

They're KEF Q10's and perhaps the term chuffing is too dramatic, it's not so much the sound of turbulent air, as just a boominess emenating from the port.
I guess my ears prefer non-ported speakers.
I think the "port filter" more than likely acts as a gentle air brake, which to me, seems to tighten up the bass a bit.

You are raising the box tuning is all.
You either have your speakers too close to a wall or are getting issues from standing waves in the room

Room dimensions?
A competently designed vented box should not be "boomy based on just being a vented box.
There are good and bad Sealed and vented box designs.

The room probably plays more a factor in the bass than the type of implemented design does.