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Well it's installed! It was more of a pain than expected, two Canadian winters had the downpipe and midpipe hopelessly stuck. Ended up having to remove the entire exhaust with the downpipe still attached to get them separated. At that point a sledge and a block of wood make quick work of it.
First the bad news - the cold start is extremely loud. Just as bad as I expected from what I'd read beforehand. If I were to start it up late at night or early in the morning I'd be throwing it into gear immediately to cut the volume down.
The rest is all good news though. Once the cold start is done (about 20 seconds) it becomes much quieter and even more so a bit later. Idle isn't much different than before.
Driving in comfort is marginally louder, but completely reasonable. Marginally increased volume at cruising speeds. It didn't drone at all before and I don't think it is now. Even throwing the transmission into S isn't obnoxious since there are no aggressive burbles.
Sport mode though - that's when things become kind of crazy. The burbles from letting off the throttle are now cracks. Sounds great under load and WOT, it's loud but I'd say the perfect volume level. Letting off the gas at 4k RPM reliably produces one big bang which is plenty of fun. Upshifts are very aggressive.
Tl;DR - Cold start is terrible, everything else is great.
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