Straight pipe with muffler sounds good, straight pipe with no muffler or cat doesn't imo. There's a guy in my neighborhood that drives past our house like 4 times a day with his Ford that is straight piped, it gets annoying hahaha.
I agree about the "cold" air intakes, they are just a waste of money, our factory intakes already bring in quite enough air for the engine, so there is no point to the cold air intake. If you had to do a cold air intake, get one with the enclosed box. The exposed box is no better than an exposed air cleaner on a carbed engine, they should just be called hot air intakes.