no muffler/cat is obnoxious. I love loud, all of my vehicles are loud. but, theres loud, and theres just noise. stock and scraggly is awful, theres nothing worse than seeing some clown with a stock motor and haggard exhaust who thinks he has a monster truck just 'cuz its loud. . .don't be onea those guys. . .

now the sound of high compression and airflow is another story, I want to hear that all day long. but still, needs to have some sort of muffling.

hi-flo cat-only sounds great as long as you have some pipe behind it. the cat straightens out the exhaust flow (while muffling in the process) which results in a very nice "tuned" sound. lengths of pipe are a necessity behind a cat (and many mufflers for that matter) to take away the "scrag" though. turndowns after cat might be enough to do it, but I like to get the exhaust away from the cab anyway. (4wheeling or slow driving) + (exhaust exit near cab) = (no good)

 

Lol... the factory cats are pretty good mufflers. Pretty good doorstops too though. Dump them.

Cops around here don't care if you're loud, as long as it sounds like you meant it to be that way. Most V8's sound a bit rough with no exhaust, but they can pass for straight pipes. Had a 4.6 and my 460 both with straight pipes... never got stopped once. Also had a 4 banger than the muffler got ripped off of going down a trail (it was a CAR lol, aka The Trashmonger), got pulled over in a week for sounding like a ridiculously loud, pissed-off hornet.