Good point that ‘sounds great’ and ‘technically correct’ not necessarily being the same thing.

On the last point, I have in fact, closed the ports on my Strads as I use the F113v2 below 90 HZ and don’t need another wave front below that frequency to smear the timing. His reasoning on that makes a lot of sense & sounds great! Go figure.

JL Audio Fathom f113 Question
 

I do not think that there is a contradiction between 'Sounds great' and applying changes that are 100% technically correct. Applying technically correct changes can result in the same system sounding better than great.
As an example, my home theater sounded great. One day I decided to move the speakers around and ran a speaker frequency response for each speaker after repositioning. The recorded sweep noise showed a sharp drop in the high frecuencies of the center channel and in one of the surrounds. It turned out that both tweeters were damaged. Replacing the tweeters made the great sound even better. I have no idea how long those tweeters had been shot!

I agree 100%. I use “technically correct” as a baseline and go from there. Without a solid technical foundation, you are building on sand.

I also cross my cr-1 at 90hz and closed the huge ports on my IB2s and it sounded much cleaner. It is correct that it changes the speaker design but since my ib2s don’t have to reach so low I think the juice is worth the squeeze.

Not directly related but I heard a rattling and thought my subs were shaking pictures on the walls. Finally figured out that the backs of my IB2s had come loose over time. Tightened some screws and all better! So don’t be so quick to blame your subs if you hear a rattle!

And for us older crowd... :D

https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/13d...0&odnBg=FFFFFF