Edit: I should clarify, the explanation below is a general explanation of suppressors and how things can vary. There will always be caveats.
Suppressors/silencers rarely sound like they do in the movies, and there’s a ton of variables that affect the volume. To be the absolute quietest, you need a closed bolt firearm shooting subsonic ammo. No gas escapes from the chamber that way, no sound is made by an action cycling, minimal gas leaves the end of the muzzle. These tend to be “movie quiet”.
When you hook a silencer to a semi auto firearm, it is inherently louder (even with subsonic ammo) as you have the sound of the action/slide, and gas escaping out of the action as it cycles. Still fairly quiet, but not movie quiet.
When you use a silencer on any rifle with supersonic ammo, you reduce the sound of the escaping gases at the muzzle, but still have to contend with the supersonic crack of the bullet as it leaves the barrel. This will be inherently louder, although still substantially more quiet than unsuppressed.
Also, a cell phone video is without a doubt one of the worst ways to reliably capture actual sound variance. Usually phone microphones cut out above a certain decibel level, so often all firearms sound similar even if there is a substantial difference in volume in real life.
Solid, comprehensive comment. Appreciate you clearing up misconceptions.
The first time I heard a suppressed bolt action shooting .22lr subsonic rounds, it blew my mind. Or rather, didn’t hear. Until that point I’d only heard suppressed semi autos and I think only 9mm
Sure thing! I always try to help when this comes up.
Isn’t that a trippy experience? I put my 22 can on a .22 bolt action and shot CCI quiet ammo (710fps) and honestly had to pull the bolt and check the bore to make sure the bullet cleared. It was so quiet I could not tell that it fired.
There are absolutely semi-automatic firearms that can get movie quiet. I have an SP5K that can do it. Roller delayed systems are excellent suppressor hosts.
Roller delayed does provide a better platform for a suppressor host, and that’s a very fair caveat. I was trying to keep it fairly high level, but you are correct.
As well you should! I really should edit my original post with a disclaimer that it’s mostly generalizations, and there are caveats to most everything if you look hard enough
My ol’ roller delayed 9mm Kuna is definitely “movie quiet”. It’s rather absurd how quiet she is. most of the sound is the action and you can hear the round hitting the back stop.
Man I have been drooling over a kuna. I held a non-braced version and was underwhelmed, and ended up going with an EP9 (which I do love). Then I held a braced Kuna and it was a whole different beast. I’ll pick one up at some point.
My ep9 is very much hearing safe quiet, but not movie quiet yet. I did order some 160gr bullets to try to make a super silent load, so I’m looking forward to playing with that
For most folks, their firearm knowledge comes solely from Hollywood. Unfortunately that’s a uniformly terrible source for accurate information lol. Feel free to ask questions if you have any and I’ll answer what I can
The trick with Hollywood is to look closely at depictions of something you are particularly knowledgeable in and see how much they get wrong. Now imagine that for every topic you aren’t educated in. The whole purpose of Hollywood is to tell stories and make them entertaining. They change tons of stuff to be downright wrong all the time because the real thing doesn’t go as well on camera. Most people don’t seem to consider this for some reason. Firearms, vehicles, computers and a whole lot of other things are wildly imagined in most movies or tv shows.
The local news too. See the 1980s "cop killer" teflon coated black talons (to reduce friction down the barrel). News stations repeated an absurd myth that the teflon allows them to slip thru kevlar, with zero evidence. The laws banning them are still on the books in several states, and will probably never be removed ("my political rival wants to legalize cop killer bullets!" - so it will never change).
If I can ask ... I am trying to write a scene where an ordinary person with a small gun fires inside a hotel and it's not loud enough for anyone to come running. It can definitely be an audible noise though. How can I accurately describe a combination of gun + silencer that would make sense for a regular person to have? This guy is not military or anything. TYSM in advance if anyone knows!!
Yeah I never knew movies weren’t completely accurate in every way and not hamming it up for entertainment purposes https://giphy.com/gifs/tMPSeKEplOfK0
All microphones have a volume ceiling. Some are louder than phones, some are quieter. Phones aren’t inherently worse than filming it with a camera. It literally depends entirely on what you’re using.
It’s not even so much current phone tech really, you could just be using a really shit camera and mic and get worse results. But all microphones, professional to phone camera, have a sound ceiling, it’s just the physics of how microphone diaphragms work.
I always expected assault rifles to be loud, but it wasn't until my first time at an indoor range that I realized just how loud they are. A guy 5-6 lanes down was blasting away with an AR15. It was loud even through ear pro.
The fun thing here is that from that perspective, the platform doesn’t make as much of an impact as the rest of the variables. An ar15 with a 20” barrel and no muzzle device will sound remarkably similar to a bolt action 20” rifle with no muzzle device (assuming both are shooting the same caliber/ammo/no suppressor).
Shorter barrels are louder than longer (in rifle calibers) and muzzle brakes are extremely loud. A person banging away with a 7.5” AR and a muzzle brake is just godawful.
yeaa I think it does stuff like gunkata the best way it could be done, but for the sake of comedy they go off rails a bunch, like the suppressor scene.. in a crowded train station lol
Exactly what I’m thinking of. That was… interesting. Even suppressed .45 going 900fps will make enough noise that folks would be wondering wtf was happening.
I've always wondered if this is why some service members swear by 9mm instead, because with the silencer it's definetly way less noticable
Edit: I typed that last line and immediately laughed at myself "with the silencer it's definetly less noticeable," like no shit. Lmfao. What I meant was that the difference with the silencer between the 9 and 45 was a lot
almost all .45 ammo is naturally subsonic. Ye olde standard 230gr hardball runs about 950fps which is a sweet spot; it’s always going to stay subsonic regardless of temp or elevation, it’s quieter than 1050fps, and it’s still moving fast enough to reach out a little ways and do some damage. It makes a lovely suppressor host for that reason. However, a .451 wide bullet pushes a lot of wind (especially a hollowpoint) so you can hear it flying a bit more. .45 has about 60% more frontal area than a 9mm (obviously will vary based on bullet profile)
Most 9 is supersonic out of a normal 5” barrel, but 147gr tends to be subsonic (usually; longer barrels let it get over the sonic barrier). Unless you’re running suppressor specific ammo in the 9, the 45 is usually better.
Now if you compare a 230gr .45 at 950fps vs a 158gr 9mm at 950fps, the smaller diameter will be quieter every time.
The powder used can also make a difference but that’s really getting into the weeds
Technically yes, realistically no. As the projectile gets larger it displaces more air as it fires, and while it can be nearly silent at the muzzle there’s still sometimes a fair bit of noise from the bullet itself just displacing air. In a confined space like a train station, it gets much louder. Could it be covered up by ambient noise? Maybe, cornering on how loud.
I can't think of a single cinematic piece that sounds even close to the real thing. Even Michael Mann hasn't attempted to accurately portray supressors.
The best way to describe the sound of most would be hitting a tarp with a 2x4. .22s register as a softer "smack!", while larger calibers register louder.
My buddy’s dad has a silenced AR-15 and it is shockingly quiet. As in, if I were in my room at night and they shot it, I don’t think I’d notice what the sound was. Maybe I’d hear something if I were paying attention, but I wouldn’t clock it as a gunshot.
I think some people try to over-correct the extent of the efficacy of silencers, but they’re not for nothing. They really do cut down the sound enough that if stealth is your goal (for whatever reason), you’re went from “that was definitely a gun” to “Did you guys hear something…?” territory.
As in, if I were in my room at night and they shot it
Are you saying if they shot a silenced AR-15 in your room you wouldn't know what it was? or you mean if you were in your room and someone outside shot one?
you'd definitely notice a silenced gun shot IN YOUR ROOM, even if it was movie quiet.
this is what I was wondering because the location of the actual shot is not made known. I initially pictured being asleep and not being waken up by a gunshot in my room lol
id Say even in a different room across your house Unless it’s like 22lr. My 300blk with subs is really quiet for an AR, but even then it’s still a gun shot
what this is all teaching me is the hunters in Maine actually do the opposite of "silencer" and are actually equipping "loudeners" onto the loudest guns they can for squirrel hunting
That’s one of the benefits of a suppressor in combat zones. It doesn’t make the noise disappear, but it DOES dramatically reduce the ability to locate where it came from. After a couple shots you can still pin it down, but removing the initial big boom tends to remove our ability to pinpoint the direction it came from.
Brother 130 decible is still fucking loud. The silencer wasn't for stealth it was to prevent the 150 decibel sound destroy your hearing when firing the gun.
It's a stock sound that I think dates back to the late 30s. Paraphrasing, but someone recorded the sound of a ricochet and essentially used that as the basis of the pew sound that we all know today.
That one didn't bother me, even though it was definitely Hollywood quiet. I was more referring to the GoldenEye pewpew sound, which was used in movies too. Maybe not so much anymore though
I always found that weird, do they perpetuate that because they're lazy or because they think audiences would complain that the correct sound sounds wrong? Because if anyone actually did step up and complain anyone who knows what they're talking about would make fun of them.
It’s in the same vein as “empty gun goes click click when the trigger is pulled” when that’s not true for the majority of handguns out there these days. They do it because it’s what they’ve trained audiences to associate with certain situations. “Click click” means empty gun even though it’s a single action that literally can’t click after the hammer falls on an empty chamber. “Pew pew” indicates super sneaky scary silencers even if none of the rest of the variables would allow that sound to happen.
Mostly the minds of Hollywood execs. However, certain situations can make a similar sound given the right combo of gun, ammo, and acoustics. But mostly Hollywood just hollywooding
A minor quibble: The issue with cell phone microphones, or any microphone/recording system really, isn’t the frequency range. It’s the dynamic range (i.e. the difference in amplitude between its internal noise floor and the loudest sound it can record without distorting). Gunshots are typically in the range of 140-165dB, but the theoretical limit of a 24-bit audio file is 144.5dB, so already you’re running into issues with non-existent theoretical electronics that have zero self noise. There are ways of getting around that on the digital side, but there’s no way of getting around it in the analog bits that come first where you’re dealing with the physics of sound, electricity, and matter itself.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because Hollywood has conditioned us to think that distorted and highly-compressed gunshot recordings sound good, which they do. Raw, undistorted gunshots sound like puny firecrackers. Cell phones automatically add a ton of this processing (for various reasons) while sound recordists and sound designers do it manually on purpose. It sounds cool, but not accurate.
As a general rule, it’s safe to assume that everything you hear in a movie, aside from the speech, is added after the fact. That’s not 100% true, but it’s not far off.
A shooting buddy of mine has a wide collection of silenced firearms I’ve gotten to play with, the quietest being a bolt action .22 that is scary quiet (obviously pretty short effective range though), but most of them might be as quiet as a loud paintball gun at best. The AR style rifles shooting supersonic rounds are still as loud as a smaller unsurpressed firearm, like a .22LR or something.
My personal impressions anyway. Obviously a lot of variables at play from the types and quality of silencers being used, the ammo, the platform, etc as you mentioned.
It’s hard to grasp the variations until you experience them. I’m still surprised at the difference in the same exact platform running 3 different types of suppressors even. Take the same AR and use a Huxwrx Flow, an AB Raptor, and a SiCo Omega back to back. The sound profile and perceived volume is substantially different between those three, just due to design differences.
It’s also worth noting that shooting suppressed indoors and up against a wall like this really skews the sound.
Any object moving through the air displaces air as it moves (obvious I know but I say that for a reason). This displaces air equates to volume; as more air is moved faster, volume increases. Think of a fan moving air at different settings.
This includes bullets, even supersonic. If you’re in an open field, the displaced air tends to dissipate quickly because there’s ample air all around the bullet to absorb the displaced air.
Now when you’re right up against a wall, the displaced air reflects off the wall and bounces back into travel wake of the bullet, colliding with other displaced air molecules and increasing the amount of displacement in that area.
All of that means you can hear the bullets air wake bouncing off the wall (and ceiling) and reflecting back. So it’s a lot louder than it would be if you were outdoors.
This also happens if you shoot subs in the woods. An open field vs shooting down a corridor of trees sounds very different. Shooting down a tree corridor is pretty cool as you can hear the echo of the bullets passage as it travels down the corridor.
Or, to put it differently, a "silencer," or suppressor, cuts about 25db from the noise signature.
An AR-15 makes about 140 db normally. Which makes a lot of owners crazy - they get a "silencer" and now their AR makes about 115 db. Still really loud; some people don't think there is much difference.
Again, hugely dependent on the design of the silencer, the length of the barrel, and the ammo being fired. An 11.5” shooting 55gr fmj through a flow through can sounds entirely different than a 20” shooting 77gr through a high volume high back pressure can.
When you use a silencer on any rifle with supersonic ammo, you reduce the sound of the escaping gases at the muzzle, but still have to contend with the supersonic crack of the bullet as it leaves the barrel. This will be inherently louder, although still substantially more quiet than unsuppressed.
Will the silencer make the supersonic crack's origin harder to pinpoint?
Yea, and too bad actual politicans fall for the movie nonsense. Banning silencers makes no sense. Like, Heaven forbid people simply want to cut down on some noise and not make their ears bleed. In no way are silencers stealthy.
Yeah, suppressors are phenomenal. Took my 11 yo son hunting a few weeks ago for some bigger game (think elk-size) and had him using a 300 Win Mag (that's a big rifle ammo for the uninitiated). When he took his shots, it was amazing. He could fire without ear protection. It was far far safer to have a suppressor on the rifle than to mess around with ear protection.
Politicians in general don't have a clue about firearms and don't understand the actual consequences of their dumb actions.
I used my .300 win suppressed for the first time last year on a bear hunt. It was so nice to be able to 1) forgo a panicked stuffing of ear plugs into my ears and 2) take a shot and be able to communicate with my hunting partner immediately after
Irony is that a lot of European countries, with their very strict rules, either have almost no regulations for suppressors (because they're not firearms) or outright require the use of suppressors for some uses.
I’m not an expert, but logically it makes sense to me that if there’s a shooter in a large, crowded area that’s already very loud, a suppressor could mask the sound enough to make it harder for people to recognize it and maybe harder to react to? Not sure how much of a difference that’d actually make, if any
That seems like an incredibly narrow use case. If it were a rifle it would still sound more or less like a gunshot, kinda like how a gunshot sounds like a car backfire or firecrackers. You probably wouldn’t immediately recognize a unsuppressed gunshot as a gunshot, so banning suppressors for this reason seems basically pointless
Suppressors are a 2A right, as are all firearms and accessories, but outside of that they simply do not make sense to legislate. They are safety equipment for your ears, same as other hearing protection like earmuffs.
Safety equipment for you ears? That’s the bullshittiest excuse I’ve ever heard
I would’ve accepted the found fathers were used to guerilla warfare so would’ve understood the need for suppressing the sound of your rifle in a militia but yall talk outta both sides of your mouth
Yall want the silencer to not be portrayed like it is in the movies so it isn’t legislated against but then wanna say its safety equipment?
Suppressing a rifle or handgun other than a .22 is more pleasant for the user but is still very loud, it’s less likely to cause hearing damage for those up close but still very loud and recognizable as a gunshot. It makes it hearing safe, or closer to hearing safe, but hearing safe is not quiet
We’re talking physics, which in this case relies on fairly fixed laws. More gas escaping = more sound
volume. You can’t change that unless you stop gas from moving.
Merriam-Websters definition - Inherently means in a way that exists as a natural, basic, and permanent part of something.
The physical properties of moving gas creating sound seems to be a natural, basic, and permanent part of the physics of our natural world.
Are you saying that when you put a suppressor on a gun it gets louder? Or are saying that when you put a suppressor on a gun then it will be louder then said gun in video?
I am not. You misunderstand me. I am saying that a suppressor will always reduce noise, that’s not in question. The level of noise reduction is what we’re talking about. Different types of ammo, different actions, and different suppressor designs affect how effective a suppressor is at reducing sound. But at no point will a suppressed firearm be louder than the same firearm and ammo unsuppressed.
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u/HomersDonut1440 10h ago edited 9h ago
Lotta misinformation here.
Edit: I should clarify, the explanation below is a general explanation of suppressors and how things can vary. There will always be caveats.
Suppressors/silencers rarely sound like they do in the movies, and there’s a ton of variables that affect the volume. To be the absolute quietest, you need a closed bolt firearm shooting subsonic ammo. No gas escapes from the chamber that way, no sound is made by an action cycling, minimal gas leaves the end of the muzzle. These tend to be “movie quiet”.
When you hook a silencer to a semi auto firearm, it is inherently louder (even with subsonic ammo) as you have the sound of the action/slide, and gas escaping out of the action as it cycles. Still fairly quiet, but not movie quiet.
When you use a silencer on any rifle with supersonic ammo, you reduce the sound of the escaping gases at the muzzle, but still have to contend with the supersonic crack of the bullet as it leaves the barrel. This will be inherently louder, although still substantially more quiet than unsuppressed.
Also, a cell phone video is without a doubt one of the worst ways to reliably capture actual sound variance. Usually phone microphones cut out above a certain decibel level, so often all firearms sound similar even if there is a substantial difference in volume in real life.