Most definitely!! I mean you can close down the air to a super tight place and get an "acceptable" draw. But you loose flavor since the stream of air hitting your coil isn't as "hard" as it would be if the smaller hole was the one directly under/beside/whatever the coil. Like if you take a pipe and run water through it. If you close down the start of the pipe the stream at the end will just be a dribble. But if you close down the end it becomes a hard stream shooting out.
As for where the air comes from -- I've tried several "side air" attys, where the air comes directly in thru the side -- almost zero flavor. I don't know for sure, but my instinct tells me this would be the case with "top air" as well, for the same reason. Now Kayfuns, and my Achilles, and even Magmas, have air coming in thru the side, but when it enters the actual atty chamber, it's coming from directly beneath the coil -- GREAT flavor!
There's a guy over at Asshat Central (ECF) who posted an image as to why this is true, but I cannot find that image anywhere; basically, air entering the atty chamber thru the side or top, goes up and down and side to side and all around, just very disorganized. Whereas when the air comes from directly beneath the coil, then it's going directly over the coil and wick, directly to your mouth, without any disorganized air currents diluting the flavor. It's just logical.
And one of the other great things about having a tiny internal airhole is that even with bottom airflow, there's very little opportunity for liquid to get into the airhole, but even if it does, it's such a small amount that blowing it back out is quite easy.
Andria