Keep in mind that except for reflected sound waves coming out of the cabinet via the cone itself or the designed opening, the cabinet does very little to the overall sound above midbass levels.
In my highly biased opinion, transmission lines are the best solution for deep, musical bass in a reasonably sized cabinet. They are more efficient than sealed, go deeper than ported or open baffles, offer a more sophisicated solution than tuned pipes, provide imaging that open/infinite baffles can't, and are much much smaller than comparable horns.
Sealed/ported designs are mindlessly simple to design compared to lines, pipes, or horns. Until the sentinel work of Augspurger and King, the trial and error approach was the only option for these other cabinet types. Check out brinesacoustics.com as a good starting point.
