Front or rear ported?

[Early B.]

A friend of mine is considering purchasing a pair of bookshelf speakers. Because of the room layout, the speakers will be close to the back wall. I want to suggest to him to either get sealed or front-ported speakers, but thought I'd check here first. Does the location of the port really matter, or will he encounter placement issues regardless of the type of speaker?

I should also mention that no sub will be used, so it would be nice for the speakers to get down to around 50 Hz., I guess.

[gregure]

Not sure what price bracket your friend has, or what he will be running his speakers with, but the new Haydn Grand from Vienna Acoustics is one of the best bookshelf speakers available. Really a gorgeous speaker in all ways. The port is not only on the front, but the tweeter is mounted within it, giving the whole cabinet a sealed look, as the port doesn't even look like a port. No problem fitting those butt up agains a wall.
In the lower price bracket, I do believe that due to the plastic design on the back of the Rti bookshelves, they can be placed against a wall with no compromise in sound quality. That is what they advertise.
The Haydns, should your friend be interested, are about $1200/pr and are 4 Ohm, so they will need a decent amp. They go to 50 Hz with ease, as do the RTi 6's.

[Mjr7531]

The RTi6s and RTi4s are the only bookshelves I know of that can be put up against a wall with a rearport, they have the powerport in back, so it's ok to put them even up to a wall.

[Willow]

I had some rear proted JBLs (two mistakes right there) they were used as my mains in the bedroom.They were located in the closet. They sounded worse than when not backed up against somthing. I used them as rears (crap again but I had to be sure they were not butt-up against the wall.