Now some people will tell you that Vas doesn't matter a hell of a lot if you get the box sized right cause the volume of air inside ,and coupled thru the port will make it all work out.

Of course all that assumes "standard" baro conditions and that is a seldom event , whereas the stiffness of the suspension is something you can count on in all weathers, and will also be more tolerant of boxes that aren't spot on.

Also I think that the air in a ported box especially can't be counted on to react as the figures might tell you depending on the program material , because the sound waves bouncing around in there will change things.

I've been shopping some celestion speakers and the ones I was looking at have loosey goosey suspension . It's kind of strange to me being more familiar with jbl stuff and the jbl's I'm interested in have high Vas figures compared to otherwise comparable celestions. The thing is you can't hardly lay hands on the really good jbl's of days gone by and celestion makes good stuff every day !

I sort of wonder if since the air inside of the box is subject to the same atmospheric conditions as the air on the outside of the box that the two changes effectively cancel each other out, at least to some degree, much like an orfice style flow bench, it's ratiometric..

to crunch all the numbers. Way to complicated for me! When I was running the numbers on different speakers, I felt like I was trying to calculate the hyperbolic curve to the moon.

Have you looked at the Infinity Kappa 12.1D? I am stunned at the power and quality of these speakers. They fit in a pretty small ported enclosure (1.75 cu ft) and they're a tightly suspended driver.

it works BEST in about 2 cubes , it has a monster magnet with lotsa control, VERY dynamic . A 2202 can be reconed with a 121a kit and that should provide a TIGHT lock up on the low end cause it has a stiff spider.

Neither of those speakers will roll off as smoothly as a 123a though and they won't quite as woody , thick which sounds real good when playing that type of music like eric gales and early zztop SRV etc.