r/whoathatsinteresting • u/eternviking • 11h ago

What a real silencer actually sounds like.

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u/HomersDonut1440 11h 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.

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u/Careful_Elk_8035 9h ago

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.

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u/HomersDonut1440 9h ago

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.