Not too knowledgable about cars so you might get a laugh out of this. Is/What is in the resonator that quiets the exhaust, and can it be gutted? Replaced the resonator with straight pipe and it sounds horrible.

leave it there or replace it with a magnaflow muffler (if i remember correctly) search the duratech perf. section.

how close to stock will the magnaflow sound?

with stock mufflers it will not sound stock but it will not be loud or sound bad or raspy either. just do it.

If you don't want to go the Magnaflow route & want a good , cheap alternative - go with a straight-through (i.e. not baffled) glasspack muffler . It will get rid of all your rasp & drone & will give the car a deeper growl , while only increasing the sound output of the car very slightly (i.e. not annoying on long trips) . I've run this setup for several years now and am very pleased with it . Buck-for-buck it's a great mod !