Port in back, or front?

[scary]

I am building a set of ported towers that will be placed about 6 inches from a wall. Will I hear any difference between a rear facing port and a front? And if I covered a front port opening with a grill cloth, would it interfere with air flow (and cabinet tuning)? I would rather put it in back, but want to hear from the experts. All opinions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Scary

[Alaric]

Not an expert, but I've seen several designs that specify a front facing port if the speaker will be used near a rear wall.

[Evil Twin]

With a six inch spacing to the rear of the cabinet, rear ports will work quite well, and they will avoid some of the forward radiation in the midrange which front ports incur. it would be instructive to measure the port output by itself, to see how the upper range resonances develop. If used with woofers with a cut off frequency around 250Hz or less, no problem, but for higher ranges, this can be an issue.

[scary]

Thank you Evil - just what I needed.