Soul Performance Valved Exhaust - Porsche 981 Cayman S

Soul Performance Valved Exhaust – Porsche 981 Cayman S

I have K&N air filters and the IPD plenum + GT3 throttle body so it may sound a little different than if I had the stock parts. Headers are stock.

Sound recorded using a DSLR with external microphone, except for the cold start clip, which is from a phone recording, due to the camera not co-operating. Unfortunately the interior clips are more windy than I’d like as I didn’t realise there would be that much wind noise.

The odd whistling noise when accelerating in the interior clips is not audible in real life, not sure what happened there.


Thoughts and impressions:

- Why didn’t I do headers, since those give more performance gains for the money? Knowing myself, I wouldn’t be satisfied with the sound of 200cell headers and a stock exhaust.

- The exhaust is louder than I expected for a cat-back muffler only (not that I’m complaining). I kind of expected this level of volume from a headers + muffler combo. Now I’m slightly concerned as I did plan to do 200 cell headers down the line…

- A little cliché to say, but as with most exhaust videos, it doesn’t really capture the volume – more useful to judging the tone.

- I picked the satin silver tips – after around 300km of driving they’ve turned noticeably gold rather than silver. I would have preferred that the exhaust tips don’t stick out as much, but you can’t adjust them any further in or they’ll angle out weirdly due to the x-pipe. I do like the aggressive look of the single wall tips.

- The tone of the sound is nice – some exhausts are loud but don’t necessarily sound good. I think the exhaust ticks both boxes nicely.

- COLD START: from inside the car, it’s not as loud as I expected. It seems to be a lot louder from behind the car (duh). Not a huge difference between open and closed valves at cold start IMO, you’ll probably still be waking people up (though admittedly the stock exhaust was hardly silent either at cold start) – the main difference is when you set off.

- IDLE: very big difference between closed and open valves. When closed, it’s pretty quiet and when open there’s a noticeable deep rumble.

- CLOSED VALVES:
When setting off from a standstill or at low RPMs with the windows closed, there’s a deep-ish tone that can be heard. By my standards it isn’t too loud, but it’s definitely louder than stock. Once you’ve already set off or have the windows open, it’s fairly quiet for a sports car both inside and out and sounds slightly louder than stock but deeper, as long as you’re gentle with the throttle.

At mid to high RPMs when driving (windows open or closed) it sounds similar to stock but a little louder. With windows closed cruising on the highway at around 2000rpm there is some noticeable sound that wasn’t there with the stock exhaust, but nothing too obtrusive (and the Cayman’s tyre/road noise isn’t quiet to begin with).

The revving clip is a little misleading IMO, in actual driving (at least from the driver’s perspective) there isn’t that much growl to the noise.

- OPEN VALVES: lolololololol I am noise. It sounds great. If you have the windows up and accelerate, it’s very loud in the cabin and there’s a significant (rather low pitched) growl until you reach the mid to high RPMs, at which it starts to scream. It sounds significantly less bassy/rumbly if the windows are open.

If you’re accelerating somewhere there are echoes it sounds ridiculous. The exhaust burbles in both normal and sport mode, with it being much more noticeable in sport mode. Downshifts are intoxicating.

When cruising normally at highway speeds, it’s actually not that loud until you give it some throttle. With sustained throttle at low to mid RPMs, the noise can become a little overwhelming, even as someone with a fairly high tolerance for loud cars.

- FUEL ECONOMY: is significantly worse. I think this is self explanatory. I want to hear car go vroom. When I’m able to restrain my right foot, I don’t notice any significant difference in fuel economy.

00:00 Cold Start
01:01 Revving
01:56 Drive-bys
03:33 In-car driving