I used to design loudspeaker enclosures professionally and still own LEAP, having originally purchased it in 1993 or so. Before that, in the late 80s, I used the original AES papers from Neville Thiele and Richard Small to write my own CAE tools for enclosure design.
I see a lot of opinions expressed in this thread about the merits and drawbacks of various enclosure designs and their interaction with the space they are placed in. Without questioning the sincerity of the people having these opinions, I have to say a good deal of the folklore surrounding discussions about e.g. vented vs. acoustic suspension enclosures isnāt very useful for making a decision. There are a lot of reasons why an engineer chooses one design over the other, and the average consumer isnāt able to make an engineering conclusion about the effects of those decisions. In other words: if you donāt like the bass response, thereās no way for you to tell why you donāt like it without some test gear and a fair bit of math. (Obvious cases like feeding large 25Hz signals into a vented design tuned to 40Hz arenāt what I meanābut as a consumer, do you know why I say āobviousā?)
In general, I suggest that lay people use the the very sensitive test equipment on the sides of their head and to train that equipment on as many top flight systems as possible. Ignore the design choices made to arrive at the solution, and to a certain extent I also recommend that people ignore the specifications since there are so many ways to game them without being the least bit inaccurate.
As miraculously good as speakers have gotten these days, I think most people are better off choosing one of the workhorse standards (Dynaudio, which I have, though I donāt know about the post-acquisition gear; Neumann, Genelec, and few others), a good pair of cans as a backup check (Sennheiser HD600 or better), and then devoting their attention to room treatment. A visit to an audiologist for a hearing check is a good idea too.
