I am not trying to be rude, but I think your brain simply wants to believe it is faster because of the increase in noise. Here on the forum there are dyno results and it is proven that doing what you did will hurt performance. Putting an air element anywhere that it does not have access to fresh air is going to hurt performance because the factory unit sources air from outside the car, and now you are sucking it in from the terribly hot engine bay, especially back at the MAF. Also, an intake may make it feel like a quicker throttle response, but the only way to actually get a quicker throttle response is with a sprint booster in line with your acceleration pedal to modify the output voltages.

You should try a DIY approach like we did, where the air is still sourced from the grill where it is cool, where proven, dynoed gains are made. Much cheaper than other solutions but the results are there. There is a filter in each of the polished canisters...