Building a little setup for my dad, its going into a volkswagen jetta, already has an alpine mrd-500 in it, so im basing my sub decision around that power. He listens to oldies, classic rock, country...so i was thinking something along the lines of a pair of sundown e8's, sundown sa-10 etc....any other recommendations are welcome. Also thinking either a low tuned ported box, or 4th order bandpass. Hes missing a bit of hearing on the low end scale so this could make up for it.

Sealed or Ported Dcon would be nice. Sealed would give nice punchy feeling.

sorry, should also note, subwoofer im trying to stay in or under 225 price range before box build....ill be setting the box up to have a flatter response over most of the curve until the low end....my dad isnt much for punchy bass, neither am i. i

Sealed boxes always sound tighter or snappier to me, perhaps punchy was the wrong word to use.

A sealed enclosure would give the flatest response

It does offer the flattest response over the entire curve, but with my fathers machining background and age, hes lost some of his lower end hearing....a ported box would make up for that and with the right setup could still offer a very nice sounding setup....im very particular in builiding boxes, especially ported since it will affect the sound and output of the woofer so much.....both of my ported setups could easily play any music from oldies, classic rock to rap and get all the lows, mids and highs that a subwoofer plays without having distortion issues. That was with a DEI Studio 12 and a RE SX 15.

Well the dcon fits the budget, as far as sealed or ported, can't really go wrong either way. I know that my last two setups were ported and they still were awesome playing rock, just wasn't sure if he would prefer the sealed type.

I wouldn't be worried too much about hearing the lower end, it'll be felt more then anything, if you know what I mean, but yeah ported will give more output overall as long as volume is appropriate.

Honestly though, sounds like you know what your doing. I've never heard any sundown drivers, so I can't really comment on their sq, but they are proven to get loud!

well thanks, i've had some practice....i like to model different response curves with box builds.....never had anything that wasnt loud and sounded good....i wont sacrifice sound for spl output...my dad isnt interested in output as much as sound but i know he needs some output to make up for his lack of hearing after machining for 30 years.....