When I was walking around the Nats, I was paying attention to the sounds of the exhaust of cars that were driving around as I am going to be putting exhaust on my car soon. Occasionally I would hear a car that the exhaust tone had a kind of tinny, metallic sound rather than a typical deep sounding rumble. I have had Flowmaster, Magnaflow and Dynomax mufflers in the past and none of them had that metallic sound which I kind of like. I never got a chance to check out any of the cars that had the metallic sound and thought I might ask here and see if anyone knows what type of mufflers sound like that.

Usually a chambered muffler like a Flowmaster makes the sound you're referring to. There are a lot of different versions of Flowmasters though. Some much more aggressive sounding than others.

Flowmaster for life....best sounding mufflers in the world IMO
That being said....I have had a muffler shop install a jobber brand on my old Road Runner they were called "V-Force" They looked just about like Flows and sounded the same for half the price....the one draw back I saw the were made in Canada not the USA

I have always loved the sound of Flowmasters on any car. They always seem to give the most chugging/powerful idle sound and have more of a deep roar at WOT versus the tinny sound that many other glass packs/turbo muffs have.

The downside is heavy drone from many chambered muffs, and also there are endless rumors about how poorly flowmasters flow/perform. I say rumors because I think much of it stemmed from a magazine article some years back that compared one particular flow master model muff (and if I remember right, it was one of their lesser flowing ones like a 50 series) to other muffs on a dyno and the Flowmaster had some poor results compared to other muffs.

A lot of what people cite is less than scientific, for example on the 94-6 Impala SS boards many guys were stating how they picked up power and dropped E/T when switching from Flowmaster American Thunder exhaust setups to other brand mufflers but they were also upgrading the pipe from 2.25 to 2.5 and going from 50 series flow master muffs (a mild sounding street muff) to something like Spintech Sportsman's, a wild sounding race muff.

One great thing is that I feel like Mopar's are kind of like 5.0 mustangs in that they always seem to sound good no matter what you do to them. I have had 500hp Chevy motors that sounded like loose sloppy farm truck motors at part throttle with the wrong exhaust system. Even with open headers at part throttle, my 340 always sounded awesome.

I was always a fan of the way Thrush Turbo mufflers sound, and I THINK they fall into the category of a "tinny" sound. I have no idea how they flow...

I've always liked the way Flowmasters sound. I still use them for my "street" system. My car is a little quicker w/ the bullet race mufflers on it so that's how I race it.

FWIW...when my car was running 11.40s at 117 mph, it ran the same w/ the full 3" exhaust and 2 chamber (40 series) flowmasters as it did w/ open headers.

Flowstoppers Bullets race mufflers or Magnflows are way better for all out perforamnce, especially at WOT

A high compression big block with "hemi" mufflers and headers will sometimes give that tinny sound. Comes from the headers more than the mufflers.

Flowmasters sound like absolute garbage on anything ...

As 340Shorty used to say:

HOOKER AERO CHAMBERS

I have Hooker Aero Chambers on my 340 Dart. I really like the sound.

I was thinking that cheap (thin) headers made the tinny sound.

In my experience, Flowmasters have a drone sound only with headers. With cast iron manifolds they don't.

I've alwyas like the sound of a full 2.25" set-up with no mufflers at all, off the manifolds, Sounds a little grumbly but quiet enough under normal conditions and wakes up nice under full throttle.
Of course I don't run high compression, or headers.

Almost everything will affect how the exhaust sounds, even with the same muffler.
Pipe size, number or bends, compression, cam, displacement.
Different engines have different sounds.
A small block ford Windsor sounds different than a Cleveland, with the same mufflers.

[quote=
A small block ford Windsor sounds different than a Cleveland, with the same mufflers. [/quote]
I wonder if that is due to them having two different firing orders

But the "loud crowd" loves them.

The Flowmaster drone was so bad I added some Magnaflow resonators out back. Sound at idle was retained, drone while driving was reduced.
This was with a 2.5" H-pipe TTI exhaust, HP manifolds, and 3:55 gears.
I have Dynamax's is another car, MUCH happier with them.

*Edit* Sorry, a bunch of PIA ads clogging up Photobucket messing up this video.

Deleted. Have to find a better host I guess.

To each their own. IMO Flowmasters and baffled/chambered mufflers in general seem to direct the sound to a very narrow pitch area, and the pitch doesn't really change with RPM - it simply gets louder. They have a dull, flat, muffled sound.

"Turbo" style mufflers, with internal tubes and packing, like Dynomax Super Turbos, let the pitch change with RPM and IMO maintain more of the traditional crisp "musclecar" sound. Even at the same DB levels IMO turbo mufflers sound crisper than a chambered muffler.

So my opinion is I don't care much for the sound of Flowmasters, especially on stock, low compression motors that don't have a lot of "character" to begin with. Exhausts, like music, takes more than decibels to sound good.

Again, to each their own.