[whydontumarryit]

Hi;

Do rear radiating ports make any significant contribution to PERCEIVED accuracy of reproduction?

In the case of the middle-t with a slow, if any, low pass filtering from the woofer does the output from the port into the mid frequency range make a difference or is that upper range attenuated to an extent that doesn't matter vs the usual omnidirectional low frequency output of any (rear ported?) speaker.
Being that some of the Bryston A series speakers have front facing ports it looks as if my impressions of the great sound of my middle-t has nothing to do with where the ports are otherwise that deliberate design choice would be consistent over the product line.
The point is, my subjective opinion needs to be swayed by a full suite of measurements of Bryston's speakers with a Klippel system to see what they (the speakers) are actually capable of. Unless similar measurement info is already at hand and easy for a novice to interpret because I don't really know what to make of this.

BTW: If a box speaker like the middle-t with reasonable output up to 10khz at 90 deg. off axis and the addition of a rear-firing sound source from the ports makes all the difference what possible reason could there be for a dedicated dipole speaker and even more an open box dipole?

[James Tanner]

Hi - from engineering:

Since the port operates in the omnidirectional bandwidth placement differences are trivial from an SPL perspective.

 It is technically operating like a Dipole when rear mounted though in the design process the amplitude response is kept linear (assuming that is your goal) no matter the direction the port is facing. 

If I had to give a nod to one, assuming you did not want the speaker right against the wall, I would probably go rear as any frequencies passing through or created by the port above the omnidirectional bandwidth would be best mitigated in SPL with rear mounting.