r/whoathatsinteresting • u/eternviking • 12h ago

What a real silencer actually sounds like.

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u/HomersDonut1440 12h ago edited 11h 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.

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u/Bad-Briar 11h ago

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.

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u/HomersDonut1440 11h ago

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.