Don't get me wrong, now. On some applications, especially normally aspirated big high power V8's with long tube headers, cutouts right after the header collectors can make some serious power gains over most muffler systems.
I had a muscle car with a highly modded small block MOPAR engine that probably was putting out close to 500 crank horsepower on pump gas. I used to have fun at stoplights when some idiots with loud car stereos would pull up next to me forcing everyone within three blocks to listen to their "music" whether we liked it or not. I'd just open the cutouts and raise the engine rpm to about 6k and hold it there. You should have seen the look on their faces. Absolutely impossible for them to hear their own music inside their own car.
Still brings a smile when I think about it.
But you are right that this is obnoxiously loud. And use is a cop magnet. And for our cars on the stock turbo, it just does not work any better that a simple test pipe. Further, a straight exhaust dump on a four banger engine sounds horrible anyway -- more like a farm tractor than anything else.
