Here is my opinion. I've tried this on my two previous cars, both NA and turbo, and on both the low-end drone was unbearable. I was told with turbo cars you wouldn't get much drone as the turbo tends to muffle all that. That's not always true. Also, the exhaust note wasn't clean and exciting in mid/high range to justify it. But this time, for some reason, I thought the new car would sound better. I really liked the sound from those videos you mentioned. It sounded clean and not too loud, exactly what I was looking for. It had the burbles and stuff, who doesn't like that! Plus the lack of any bolt-on kits on the market was not helping my impatience. I saw that kit was just a few pipes and tips to replace the muffler, easy enough for any muffler shop to do. So I went and got my muffler removed, custom piping welded in, plus some larger tips added. Overall it came out looking really sharp. When they revved the car on the lift it sounded amazing. I couldn't wait to drive it. But my excitement was short-lived. I drove back to work and within 10 seconds I knew it was a stupid idea. To be more specific, the tone was loud right when you apply any throttle and accelerate moderately, as you would from a light, especially comparing to that quiet factory muffler, or any car on the street for that matter. I don't know how it sounded on the outside, but you can hear it really loud from inside. It was particularly intense next to other cars. Every gear change was more pronounced (that was cool!). Those burbles and pops at low rpm when you let off gas - my favorite bit. The problem was that all those sounds were just way too loud, even if they were nice. But there was also some occasional backfiring which I found annoying. I thought maybe I just needed to get used to the new sound more, so I kept driving, played with different gear accelerations, throttle inputs, etc. Not going to lie, the low-mid rpm tone was embarrassing, like you have a leak in your exhaust. But surprisingly, the car did not drone much at all. As the rpms climb the exhaust note gets a bit cleaner and actually quieter, then at the top (5-6k) it just sounds like a rush of air, not even loud, just really boring. The stock muffler created that awesome note. It wasn't there just to muffle things. When you read about this car sounding fun and all, yeah, that's the muffler! Removing it does not make that sound louder and better. It makes different sounds louder, that's all.
This is the perfect mod for the track or a few people who like loud cars, but it's not one if your car is daily driven, especially if you have passengers or someone else driving your car, as they will find it annoying. After all, there is a reason why companies spend tons of time designing mufflers for sound, not just performance. Some say that throttle response gets better. Hmm, felt the same to me and I am sensitive to stuff like that. Long story short, I went back to the shop the same day and got a magnaflow muffler. I did not like that either as it was super quiet. At that point I just got jaded and considered going back to stock and waiting for a proper bolt-on system, but decided to try a different shop first. I told them my situation and what I wanted the car to sound like. I wanted something in between stock and muffler delete. They had this flowmaster "outlaw" can that I never heard of. It's a straight-through design, a small cylinder shape, about 1/10th the weight of stock, matte black, etc. I'll make a separate thread on that. Well, I liked the way it looked and sounded, did not expect that. It's more or less in the middle of stock and muffler delete, probably a bit closer the latter. I guess you can say it's a muffled muffler delete mod! You definitely lose the nice factory tone, that's inevitable, but you gain a lot of nice sounds that I mentioned earlier.
My honest advice to you and everyone considering this is to wait for a properly designed kit that's proven and reviewed a bunch with tons of videos. But if you can't wait, then try what I did.
