That sounds exactly like what we're hearing. I enjoy loud cars but she's apparently more sensitive. Hopefully it's something we'll get used to.
It caught me off guard at first. We have a bonus room off the master bedroom over our garage. That's used as our home office. I usually hear the starter motor and then the faint din of an engine running when my wife starts one of our V-6 cars. The first time she started the Ascent in the garage, I was like, "holy cow -- what is that??"
Listen to your Ascent running cold in a room above your garage. There's a
real rumble going on!!
There are probably countless videos on YouTube of Subarus with modified exhausts. Older STIs sound like deep bumble bees with uncorked mufflers. Our Ascent's engine is different in several ways from the older EJ engines, but that boxer-4 rumble is still present to some degree.
I've grown to like it. I think there's a lot of character to this engine -- that gutteral "purr" is one of the charming things (to me) that differentiate it from all the other SUVs out there.