One of my good friends recommended to remove the cat and weld in a test pipe. It does give more power and idle smoother. The problems is the exhaust is much louder with a test pipe welded in. I'm looking to quiet it down some and still have the better flow. I'm thinking of either welding in a magna flow high flow cat or a long resonator. What would everyone recommend?

 

Either would work. Do you need a cat in your area? If not, got with the Magnaflow or the RB pre-silencer.

 

I got a MagnaFlow 24" long by 2" straight-thru, had 2" 2bolt flanges welded on either end (IIRC the cat was almost exactly 26" end to end). Now mine is pared with a MindTrain header which was made to bolt right up to the stock cat, so if you're using the stock exhaust and down pipe, you'd be pretty much the same as mine.
I guess the only issue you might have is the MangnFlow is kinda thin walled so it's a littlte louder inside the car than outside. Certainly not a deal breaker in my case. In fact cruising at highway speed is quite quiet, it's just under hard acceleration/high rpm that it gets loud....which for is very tolerable.

 

I ended up getting a magnaflo high flow cat and I'll weld it on. It should give me more power than the stock cat but quiet it down quite a bit. The only worry I had about the resonator is it might only quiet it down a little. I'll update once I get it on. The price was $58 including shipping for it.

 

I'm running the very tiny magnaflow highflow cat on my 2 1/2 inch exhaust with a vibrant muffler and rb header. The cat seemed to take a lot of the raspyness out and give the car a deeper tone. And the added backpressure seemed to help the torque some as well