It's very common for aftermarket exhaust headers to be a spaghetti of equal length curved tubes into a collector for better flow. Lots of videos on this discussing specific engine types and goals. I'm assuming Acura are taking this approach further down the exhaust system as well?
I imagine fluid modelling with all the variables needed to meet manufacturing requirements (material, space constraints, across RPM ranges, etc.) and the speed to allow an engineer to iterate the design—keeping up with integration requirements—hasn't been practical until recently.
I bet this saves the money, too; a muffler is an extra component you need to source and/or build. Bending some extra pipe seems a lot cheaper.
> I bet this saves the money, too; a muffler is an extra component you need to source and/or build. Bending some extra pipe seems a lot cheaper.
Now hold on, extra length on the exhaust manifold / headers are not going to reduce sound so much you don’t need a muffler. And the muffler is far from the most expensive part in the exhaust system, which would be the catalytic converter.
