For arbitrary electrically large cavities, the ideal reverberant frequency is of critical to predict the response of the reference antenna or the electronics inside. To determine the ideal reverberant frequency, this work has carried out a comparison study on the scattering parameter S 11 and S 21 based methods for the general case in reverberation chamber (RC). For the two methods, both of them share the same theoretical basis according to the ergodicity principle, i.e., the ideal field distribution and the commonly used correlation analysis. While for arbitrary electrically large cavities, the S 11 samples rely on the mechanical stirrer (which is not easy to be equipped like that of a classic RC), S 21 samples are more easily recorded by frequency stirring technique. And the corresponding experimental results show that the S 21 based method can provide a more conservative estimate of the ideal reverberant frequency.