Installed mine this morning, took it for a 15 min joy ride, first thought: WOW THAT SOUNDS AGGRESSIVE! I was blown away, I'm still smiling.
It has an obvious deeper grumble to it when accelerating than stock and when flooring it the VTEC on the top end suddenly gets VERY loud and sounds formidable to a NASCAR race, but only when flooring it
After i got by from my ride i quickly popped the hood and jumped out to feel if there was a difference in air between the closed off compartment where the intake is compared to the engine area and it was a VERY big difference, the air around the intake was cooler and close to outside temperature and then i put my hand on the other side of the heat shield it was MUCH warmer and i could feel heat radiating off from the engine but it wasn't getting near the intake so im very happy about that seeing as this was the whole point.
I didn't know this but there is an air scoop built into the front of the engine compartment and it funnels air into the stock system from the grill, the instructions said to put it back in after the install and the funnel end rests right up against the intake filter, perfect fit funneling cold air directly from the outside right into the AEM filter!
I couldn't be happier with this Cold Air Intake, it does its job better than I expected and makes the engine sound great. Makes driving that much more fun when you can hear the power from the engine.
Its a little louder but mostly a deeper loud grumble when accelerating normally from a stop sight to like 35 mph.
Its around 3x as loud as stock if you floor it and hit all the high ends VTEC sounds nuts haha
When just driving regularly at the speed limit its similar noise as stock nice and quiet, which is what i love about it. I thought there might be some noticeable whistle or intake noise but didn't notice any
10/10 Would buy again.