Exhaust questions or (My CAT is Loud)

[Subix]

So I took the SVX to a muffler shop about 3 weeks ago to have them see if they can patch up whatever ungodly hole there is that makes my car sound like every other 94 on the street lacking maintenance. He said the cat converter was bad and needed replaced because where it connects is shot.

Being I have 200k on this car, there is almost zero doubt in my mind it could use a new catalytic converter. However, he said they would use their own converters and weld it all together instead of using the gaskets.

Price was about $245 with labor and parts, he said. My concern is after market converter. I'm afraid that they'll just be throwing in whatever and end result will either be crap performance or other issues popping up because it's not OEM.

I almost did it... until he showed me the back end of my exhaust where it connects to the muffler and wiggled it around saying "that's all junk". Now, I'm not sure what he meant other then he followed with how he would cut and weld it all together but that sounds like just more problems to me and to say the engineers at Subaru created junk (not the metal but how it is connected) from some shop guy scares me, so I passed.

1. Would I be better off going with a more modern cat oppose to OEM?
2. Would issues arise going Non-OEM maybe?

Another shop said it was just the gasket (fine) but the gaskets cost upwards of $70, which doesn't surprise me plus $100 for the labor. For that much money I would think I could apply it at doing better overall instead of just patching stuff?

Any ideas/suggestions?