Here we go again... I don't mean to pick a fight but... Pods are great, velocity stacks are great, you don't have to keep the stock air box if you don't want it. It is not necessarily "best". If you want a stock looking bike why wast money on pods. If you want to put pods on you will likely have to re-jet your carbs, but pods work just as good, If not better than the stock air box. The whole reason you need to re-jet is because of an increase in air flow, this is a good thing.
No offense meant to the old timers, I just think you are leaving out information. 
I'm not so much offended, as appalled by the misinformation distributed, and the misapplication of physical principles.
The only possibility of increased air flow is at very high RPMs, at or beyond red line where the stock air box arrangement can become restrictive. The volumetric efficiency of the engine is NOT changed by the air filter alone. What does change with the filter element type, is depth of the vacuum pulled in the carb throat. Just as when you apply choke butterfly closure, which causes a deeper vacuum in the carb throat (which "pulls" more fuel through a given orifice size), a longer and slightly more restrictive filter element tract, also causes a deeper vacuum to occur in the carb bore.
You have to increase jet/metering size in the carbs for pods because that generally raises the carb throat vacuum which pulls less fuel from the metering orifices. To compensate for such loss of vacuum and maintain A/F ratios as before, you must increase fuel metering orifice size so the jets can flow the proper amount of fuel for the air being injested by the engine.
Pods don't increase engine air flow or power at idle, yet you still have to make a metering adjustments to compensate for the carb throat pressure differences.
Further, the stock air box and intake runner arrangement was engineered to keep the airflow as laminar as possible, over all the operating ranges. Turbulent flow contains eddies of higher and lower pressure vortexes which reach into the carb bore. Their length is variable with air speed. When these eddies occur over the jet outlet ports, you get leaner or richer mixtures with small variations of inlet speeds. I have yet to see any pods do anything to keep the airflow laminar, not only does the filter media itself generate turbulence right at the mouth of the carb, but most, if not all, have shape edge at the carb inlet over which turbulence is guaranteed to develop.
Pods are cheap and they look "cool". If you haven't made volumetric efficiency changes inside the engine, or you aren't over revving them, your benefit from pods will be a "change" but don't expect a power improvement for street riding.
If you have a race motor operating well outside of stock parameters, yes you can make use of Pod filter to gain that racer's edge on the track (or dyno)
You can even make pods work acceptably on a street engine. But, they ain't better!
Finally, "pod filters" are NOT specification. It is unclear whether two filters from the same manufacturer behave equally, let alone two filters from different manufacturers.
Anybody ever flow benched their pods?
