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"Best sounding exhaust" is a moving target. My exhaust "journey" resulted in an exhaust note produced by a custom-grind cam and supercharged LS3, Kooks LT headers with green cats/x-pipe, and a Corsa Indy Pro axle back. I like it as there is no drone although the headers are a lot louder than the stock manifolds. It has a strong idle and roars when I put my foot into it making it a lot of fun when driving around town.
I agree to a point on not needing a tune due to running LTs. But anyone here with a stock tune will pick up a fair amount of power with a good tune. The tune would work together with the LTs. I wouldnt be surprised if LTs and a tune would pick up 50hp......
Most LS platforms and forums agree that tune+full exhaust is worth ~40hp. Certainly not chump change for gains, at all- but a tune is not absolutely necessary to do when just doing full exhaust. It may be more cost effective to wait until all mods are done, then pay for the tune once
No matter how you cook this chicken, you're gonna make more power. The gains only go up with a tune, and we can all agree on that
40hp, 50hp, different dyno's, different techs, etc. With just a tune and bolt-ons, I ran 12.80s@110mph in the 1/4 mile in a stock internals 2000 A4 vert with 3.15 gears. This was THRU STOCK EXHAUST MANIFOLDS! I'm in the camp that believes a tune will net more power than LT's ON A STOCK INTERNALS LS1/LS6....