Hi, Peter. I'm not in the market for pipes at the moment but my suggestions (to start the discussion) would be:
no heat-shields
different sizes of baffles (for tuning of the sound)
Regarding the sound clips, you're right in that, on their own, they're useless but...
if you were to record a stock set of pipes (or TORS, as I think most people have heard these) at the same time, with everything in the same position, it would give a much better idea of the tone.
Just a thought.
