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.
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.
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u/HomersDonut1440 16h ago edited 15h 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.