The deathbox loads the driver cone evenly to increase performance.  The white paper says it does this through use of the slot design.  The fact that the slot design terminates halfway across the cone has something to do with it too.  I've thought of another way to do this and I'm looking for problems or reasons it won't work.  Steve may have tried this already as he said in the white paper that during development they moved the position of the port 13 times.  Basically, I would put the port in front of the driver.  In most bandpass boxes the port is at a right angle to the driver.  What if we swung the port around so its pointing directly at the driver and center it on the center of the driver's cone.  Then we make the port flush with the inside edge of the box so its flat against the wall opposite the driver.  

http://www.audio2.homestead.com/files/clear_bandpass.jpg

Basically so its like this but with the port centered on the driver and sticking outside the box.  Does anyone see any reason why this arrangement would not load the driver evenly?

-Matt

The only thing I could really think of is that the lack of pressure on the center of the cone would cause an issue.  But I'm not sure it works like that at very low frequencies unless cone breakup is an issue.  I guess my real question is, is this method going to provide a performance increase over conventional port placement in the same way that the deathbox would?  If I had the resources to build and test this right now I would be all over it.  Unfortunately I don't.  So, I'm left with speculation.  

-Matt

Like the HW top port, but with the port sticking out of the box so its flush on the inside.  That seems like it would provide even cone pressure wouldn't it.