Controlling/dispersing the axial (2 wall) and tangential (4 wall) modes is important for speaker cabinets.  This is true for ported speaker cabinets more than closed speaker cabinets due to the quantity of stuffing material in the box.  Ported speaker cabinets are normally lined only along the walls, and sealed speaker cabinets are normally fully filled.  A fully filled cabinet is well dampened due to the large amount of stuffing material.  Cabinet dimensions are also less important in subwoofers to to the very long wavelength relative to the cabinet size.  It is more important for mid-woofer enclosures where the resonant axial wavelength will approach 2 lambda (i.e. 2 wavelengths) in the enclosure.

The preferred rectangular cabinet ratio’s are:

                                Height          Width          Length

1    Sepmeyer    A    1.00            1.14           1.39

                         B.    1.00           1.28           1.54

                         C.    1.00           1.60           2.33

2.   Louden         D.    1.00           1.4             1.9

                          E.    1.00           1.3             1.9

                          F.    1..00          1.5             2.5

3.  Volkmann       G.   1.00           1.5             2.5

4.  Boner             H.   1.00           1.26           1.59        

These numbers are a reprint from F. Alton Everest’s Master Handbook of Acoustics .