A comparative study of the performance of different schemes used to solve one-dimensional gas flow equations when applied to the computation of the frequency response of exhaust mufflers is presented. Simple but representative systems with well-known acoustic behaviour were considered. Apart from the classical Lax–Wendroff and MacCormack schemes, the total variation diminishing schemes, flux corrected transport techniques or the innovative space–time conservation element and solution element method were considered. The results provide guidelines for a proper choice of the numerical scheme, taking into account the mesh spacing.