I have a 96 honda civic ex coupe. I'm one of those people that waits till something needs to be replaced before i make an improvement to the car. When i bougth the car it already had a cold air intake, but that's all. About 2 years ago i hadheaders put into the car. Just 2 weeks ago i realized that my muffler had holes, so i looked into exhaust because i wanted something to sound nice, yet not too loud. I had some prices from shop for around $800 for a whole system installed. This morning i decided to just replace the muffler with the stock muffler. but i saw some intakes that i liked and asked for the price. Bottom line is i got an oval muffler of about 4", and the pipping of about 2.5". The car sounds way too loud for me, too loud that i don't enjoy driving it. The guy told me that i need a cat, and i'll be ordering a high flow one on the net, and going back to him to install it when it arrives. I'm going cat-less right now.
Here are my questions on how much quieter can i get the car to sound.

will the high-flow cat lower the noise significantly? where can i get one, what brand, not too expensive?
should i get a resonator installed? How much should i pay for one?
should i look into changing the muffler (eventhought i don't want to, moneywise)?
and lastly, should i be able to see right thru the muffler into the pipping? is there supposed to be something inside? The muffler is oval, it does have some sort of metal filling the oval part of the muffler, but not the size of the hole of the muffler.

Much needed help please.
again, i do want good performance out of the car, but definately not too noisy.
thanks

 

a resonator and a catalytic converter of anysort will make the sound more bearable. look for the hi flow cat and resonator by magnaflow. $70-$100 is what i've seen for each. if you want to change to a quieter muffler for cheap, get a magnaflow for $80. you'll like it.

and about the seeing through muffler, yes, you should be able to see through your muffler. my magnaflow is like that XD.

 

thanks. I already found a direct fit magnaflow cat, but im having problems finding a resonator. Would this one fit my car?

http://www.superexhaust.com/cgi-bin/...d174e4b202759c

 

Resonators are univeral, you can find them usually any length and inlet/outlet diameter you need. I've got a 22" Magnaflow resonator with 2.25" inlet/outlet (to match my custom catback piping) and i love it. A cat/resonator will definitely make the noise more bearable, it's highly recommended. And btw with exhaust, you totally get what you pay for, so dont expect GReddy/Apexi/RSR sound out of a $30 ebay muffler