H pipe necessary?

[gopokes]

I am starting to work on my exhaust and was thinking about running each side straight back into a muffler and dumping in front of the axle. I started doing a little research on what mufflers sound best on the 5.3 and found that there are alot of people out there that say you should have an H or X pipe. From what I have read it will lower the tone a little and take away any popping on deceleration. So my question is how much of a difference are we talking here? Does anyone have any experience with the sound of one vs. the other?