A front firing sub may be bad if you have kids or animals that will scratch or poke at the driver. In terms of quality, a properly designed sub with either driver will sound excellent.
There are fine examples of both downfiring: SVS, REL, ACI. Frontfiring: Aerial etc. I can see a potential advantage to front firing if the crossover is high enough, probably above 100Hz, but that's a different matter.
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