Ok first I would like to apologise for giving somewhat false information to a few people with enclosure design questions. I just talked with Kicker Institue of Technology. It seems I was only halph right on my prior statments. You will actually get higher SPL numbers out of a ported enclosure versus sealed enclosures. Kicker recommends ported enclosures for all of their subs to acheive maximum performance. As the sound reaches the tuning frequency of the port the sub woofer actually moves less and all the sound comes from the port. Since the woofer is moving less you can then input alot more power and drive the sub harder and acheive even higher out put levels. The draw back is that once the frequency drops below the port tuning frequency the SPL levels drop dramitcally and speaker detonation can occur. Sealed enclosure offer much better frequency response across the board, and play much lower frequencies due to the added dampening of the sealed enclosure. Sub woofers that are designed for sealed enclosures often require less air space and have longer voice coils to allow the woofer to move more to get the desired SPL level. For example the kicker Solobaric line of subs.
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Hmm, I missed where you said anything differnt from this, but what you've posted above is generally the correct information.
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