If the port is cut on the rear baffle, how far away will the speaker need to be from the wall. Due to the Tower's size, I'd like to be able to place the speaker as close to the wall as possible. Feedback from owners of "stock" Towers?

If the port is cut on the front, would it be a problem if it's cut in mid-baffle (approx 6" below woofer)? I'd want the option to put things in front of the speakers.

thanks,
gar.

The port is fairly large and so velocity is rather low. But I'd still suggest six inches of unobstructed area surrounding the port. That said, I've got mine shoved clear back against the wall, with exactly two inches between the rear baffle and the wall. It sounds just fine like that.

That is, does rear-firing make it easier to get more bass by using boundaries?

I'm sure there are some applications where the two are decoupled; I've seen a few designs where the port doubles as part of a Helmholtz resonator and also as a sort of truncated horn. But in general, the woofer and port are treated as forming a system and their inter-relationships are intimately combined.

Certainly, midrange output from the cone acts differently in relationship to room boundaries than does the bass output from the port. But the bass output from the cone and the bass output from the port - within an octave of each other - interact with the room in pretty much the same way.