I'm chiming in just because I enjoyed reading this whole thread - this is what makes forums like this great, its all over the place but nobody's getting mad!
Anyway - loud pipes: my tastes have changed as I've aged (I'm mid 50's). In my youth I was all about the louder the better. The owner of one of the ranches I worked on believed in "the quieter the better" and all of his vehicles were kept in top shape, with very quiet mufflers. I didn't get it at the time, but I sure do now. One of the reasons I sold my Titan was because it was too loud. The owner before me had put a cat-back system on it, and it was embarrassing to start on early morning. Had it been a true crew cab I would have replaced the exhaust, but so be it...
Same with music - my tastes have broadened as I've aged, and I love when the kids come home because they introduce all kinds of new stuff to the roadtrip playlist. Anytime we get in the car somebody gets assigned play list duty - if nobody steps up I load my Bluegrass Covers playlist from Spotify - that usually gets somebody else to take over (although I could listen to that list on repeat). Left to my own devices I go back and forth between 70's on 7, Classic Vinyl and Jazz. On long road trips, especially the high desert, I get really into Classical, just seems to go with the scenery.
Huge fan of XM, in my Xterra the sound quality is better than CD's and no static (no static at all....). For what it's worth, I haven't paid more than $7.99 per month per car in about 5 years for XM, I just leave it on auto-pay, and when I see the monthly bill went from $16 to $60 or so, I call, tell them that's too much and I'm out unless they give me the "promotional" rate for another year - they don't even argue anymore and even credit the overpayment to the next couple months, and it's well worth $16 to us.
Have a good day everyone - thanks for reminding me why I hang out here!