Barrel Length and Noise

According to Google there’s a 2” difference in barrel length between my pump and bolt action .22’s that I hunt with, so it’s pretty noticeable decibel change in my experience. I wouldn’t shoot my bolt .22 without ear pro, was just shooting standard velocity fed ammo.
 
OkayShooter said:
Repeated impulse is going to end up with damages.
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Yup. Just wear earpro. From a 16" bbl I find regular HV .22LR uncomfortable. I too have had tinnitus since my early 20s due to stupidity and have no desire to worsen it. Best purchase I ever made was 3m Comtac III's. I can wear them all day without discomfort.
 
Quietest I've ever shot were the little Colibri rounds out of a Browning Trombone. The firing pin/hammer click was louder than the shot - had to take off the earmuffs to hear the shot.
Then it was standard velocity shorts out of a BSA "free rifle" GF couldn't hear the shot upstairs when I fired it in the basement.

Any quieter, use subsonic rounds and a suppresso... no, you can't do that here...
 
Here is a scientific study worth consideration. It was performed by a doctor specializing in hearing loss.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0194599811398872

This is the pertinent information from the study.

Results. All suppressors offered significantly greater noise reduction than ear-level protection, usually greater than 50% better. Noise reduction of all ear-level protectors is unable to reduce the impulse pressure below 140 dB for certain common firearms, an international standard for prevention of sensorineural hearing loss.

Conclusion. Modern muzzle-level suppression is vastly superior to ear-level protection and the only available form of suppression capable of making certain sporting arms safe for hearing. The inadequacy of standard hearing protectors with certain common firearms is not recognized by most hearing professionals or their patients and should affect the way hearing professionals counsel patients and the public.
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[FONT=&quot]The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets 140 dB as the safe threshold for single-impulse sound exposure. Using the adjusted NRR levels, most hearing protection (NRR 19-25 dB) is unable to make hearing safe a firearm producing an impulse sound louder than 149.5 to 154 dB. The best available ear-level protection (earmuffs, NRR 31 dB) is unable to make hearing safe any firearm louder than 163 dB under the best of conditions[/FONT]
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What this says is that no hearing protection is capable of fully preventing hearing damage from full power rifles and handguns. Thus the Canadian ban on silencers forces shooters to damage their hearing / health, which likely violates our charter rights.
 
I Dont Care About You said:
Apparently you missed the part where OSHA says there is no limit for impulse exposures.

Gunshot time exposure is measured in microseconds, so it takes an awful lot of them to add up to any length of exposure time.
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Then why are half the people in the Infantry have loss of hearing if you say osha says it's okay? Or police?

Like I said, I had hearing damage in my early 20s from shooting. So you'll get away with 1 or 2 shots for the casual hunters. But long term nope. Argue with me all you want. You're wrong and damage does occur.
 
Butcherbill said:
According to Google there’s a 2” difference in barrel length between my pump and bolt action .22’s that I hunt with, so it’s pretty noticeable decibel change in my experience. I wouldn’t shoot my bolt .22 without ear pro, was just shooting standard velocity fed ammo.
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Out of curiosity, how long are those barrels?
 
Back in the '70s I lived in USA and had a .25 Tangfolio and .22lr Jensen 'pocket guns' among my firearms, and rarely used earpro. A 'box or two' every couple weeks adds up. Now 50 years later I Still have constant tinn and 'dead spots' at high freqs. Back the E-P wasn't a high priority - I also ran cutoff and dado saws at a factory, again w/o E-P. Now if someone at the range fires b4 I get ears on, it hurts like a needle in the ear.
 
It's never been my objective to get the noise level down, but in the years I've been shooting...the example that sticks-out was using CB Quiet-22 in an old Cooey 78. Quiet ammo/longer-than-average barrel length. First shot-the bullet hitting an empty soup can seemed louder than the gun's report.
 
Buck1950 said:
Back in the '70s I lived in USA and had a .25 Tangfolio and .22lr Jensen 'pocket guns' among my firearms, and rarely used earpro. A 'box or two' every couple weeks adds up. Now 50 years later I Still have constant tinn and 'dead spots' at high freqs. Back the E-P wasn't a high priority - I also ran cutoff and dado saws at a factory, again w/o E-P. Now if someone at the range fires b4 I get ears on, it hurts like a needle in the ear.
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Funny enough with things like the Jensen (Jennings?) 22lr's and other sub ~3" barreled 22's theres not enough barrel length for the bullet to get supersonic. Not sure about .25acp if its a similar situation.
 
.22LRGUY said:
It's never been my objective to get the noise level down, but in the years I've been shooting...the example that sticks-out was using CB Quiet-22 in an old Cooey 78. Quiet ammo/longer-than-average barrel length. First shot-the bullet hitting an empty soup can seemed louder than the gun's report.
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Having a quieter gun is also not my primary objective, although it is a definite bonus if one can achieve it without losing performance. I remember using my dad's old Cooey growing up, but I never did pay attention to whether or not it was quieter. Mind you, we only ever shot Winchester Wildcat and Federal Champion bricks, so I don't think one would really notice the difference with that high-velocity stuff.

Butcherbill said:
Sorry, I thought I added that part lol. The pump is a 24” barrel and the bolt is a 22” barrel. I’ll have to download a decibel reader app if I can find one that’s accurate and see what the difference between the two is.
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Thanks for satisfying my curiosity lol! If there are decibel reader apps that work I'd be surprised. From my understanding, they work with more continuous noise as opposed to the very brief sound impulse that a gun would give off. However, I'd be happy to be proven wrong!
 
The difference between 10/22 in sound registry is quite negligible, running a 8" takedown, 12" fixed stock or a 20" target, the same ammo produced almost similar results, we could shoot all three without ear pro, however the 8" had a bit more pop than the 20" barrel. This was purely to the person shooting, to everyone else around, no difference was observed, the difference was also barely registered on the meter (1-1.3 dB)
Massive difference on the chronograph, 8" barrel put out 1080 FPS, the 20" barrel would hit as high as 1250-1300 FPS shooting CCI Blazer

This changed our holdovers quite a bit in the shorter barrel, but they were just as accurate and consistent (if anybody was wondering)

The only way we could get the actual audio register down was switching to Aguila Sniper Subsonic
All barrels register between 900-920 FPS, identical grouping and the noise was significantly lesser.
If I were to roughly compare it would be the same amount of noise as closing a truck tailgate, or a loud clap, very identical to a pellet or CO2 airsoft gun.

We could have shot subsonic rounds all day without Ear Pro, the rounds made more noise pinging the steel targets than they did when shooting.

If you are comfortable losing velocity/distance, and want the quieter rifle, subsonic ammo is the only way to go.
Most broken in 10/22s will run subsonic ammunition, you can also buy a spring kit for 30$ to swap in, if 30 is still too much, you can start by snipping one coil off your stock recoil spring and testing till you find out a sweet spot where it cycles too


One of our rifles did have issues cycling subsonic, but that also was running a heavy spring as the owner likes using CCI stingers.

I've built a lot of custom 10/22 rifles from scratch for myself and friends, most of them didn't include a single Ruger component. So a lot if this testing/trying was done to figure out how to tweak or custom builds.
Hope this helps what you're looking for
:ar15::ar15::ar15:
 
OkayShooter said:
Then why are half the people in the Infantry have loss of hearing if you say osha says it's okay? Or police?

Like I said, I had hearing damage in my early 20s from shooting. So you'll get away with 1 or 2 shots for the casual hunters. But long term nope. Argue with me all you want. You're wrong and damage does occur.
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The infantry use 22 rimfire bolt action rifles? This entire discussion has been about 22 rimfire rifles and here you've completely changed the parameters of the discussion.

A centrefire rifle will produce 165 dB muzzle blast. THAT will most certainly cause hearing damage because it is 25 dB louder than the 140 dB limit for hearing damage. Not sure why this needs to be explained but here we are.

Due to the logarithmic nature of sound, 3dB is a doubling of the noise level and 10 dB is 10x the noise level.
 
Butcherbill said:
Sorry, I thought I added that part lol. The pump is a 24” barrel and the bolt is a 22” barrel. I’ll have to download a decibel reader app if I can find one that’s accurate and see what the difference between the two is.
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Don't waste your time. Gunshots are WAY too loud and WAY too short an event for an app or a regular sound meter to capture. Specialized and very expensive equipment is required to sound test firearms.

Insufficient equipment will not capture all of the sound peak and thus will show a much lower peak than actually occurred.


slinkylegs said:
Thanks for satisfying my curiosity lol! If there are decibel reader apps that work I'd be surprised. From my understanding, they work with more continuous noise as opposed to the very brief sound impulse that a gun would give off. However, I'd be happy to be proven wrong!
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You are not wrong.
 
I Dont Care About You said:
Don't waste your time. Gunshots are WAY too loud and WAY too short an event for an app or a regular sound meter to capture. Specialized and very expensive equipment is required to sound test firearms.

Insufficient equipment will not capture all of the sound peak and thus will show a much lower peak than actually occurred..
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As long as it can pick it up and give a rough idea of the decibel variation between the two rifles I’ll be fine with it, it’s just for curiosity sake as it’s a noticeable difference when shooting.
 
I Dont Care About You said:
The infantry use 22 rimfire bolt action rifles? This entire discussion has been about 22 rimfire rifles and here you've completely changed the parameters of the discussion.

A centrefire rifle will produce 165 dB muzzle blast. THAT will most certainly cause hearing damage because it is 25 dB louder than the 140 dB limit for hearing damage. Not sure why this needs to be explained but here we are.

Due to the logarithmic nature of sound, 3dB is a doubling of the noise level and 10 dB is 10x the noise level.
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Wouldn't it be the way we measure sound, not the sound itself, that has a logarithmic nature?


Also, CDC says 120db is enough to cause injury. So by THAT standard rimfire will absolutely damage your hearing. Its just not an OSHA violation...

Shouting or barking in the ear 110 Hearing loss possible in less than 2 minutes
Standing beside or near sirens 120 Pain and ear injury
Firecrackers 140–150 Pain and ear injury
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https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/hearing_loss/what_noises_cause_hearing_loss.html
 
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