Are OTB suppressors worth it?

[alexnelon]

Edit: If this were a true statement, then arguing over 3 dB at the 130dB mark would be fruitless anyway — as no suppressor would be good enough alone for a shot, and all decent suppressors would be good enough when combined with ear plugs. In other words, all of these suppressors would be functionally equivalent given a range of 3dB, and it goes back to being a silly debate.

This is 100% correct, it is not a good use of anyone's time to worry about the difference between 127dB and 132dB, much less argue.

Like I've said before, it's like arguing whether the safe threshold for driving your car into a brick wall with no seat belt is 70 or 85 mph. Seems like a big difference until you realize the actual number is probably more like 15 mph, but we can't know for sure because we can't intentionally harm people to find out.

The aggregate study I linked above is showing that basically every major study done on firearms-related NIHL was wrong and the results are generally invalid.

The International Journal of Audiology (iirc, it's been a while) published a study out of Taiwan back in like 2010 that did a 10-year study on police officers using double ear pro and well over half of them had significant, measurable hearing loss after just 2 weeks, which got worse and worse for the 10 years they tracked it. Using plugs AND muffs.

 

[Bluefish]

Lower is still better because your comments are not considering degree of damage.

I don’t think anyone disagrees that lower is better. There are just functional limits of how quiet you can get a can and still make it usable. An AR platform is a good example. The platform itself is right about 140 db from port pop, action noise, so a 120 db can really doesn’t matter.

 

[glock233]

I don’t think anyone disagrees that lower is better. There are just functional limits of how quiet you can get a can and still make it usable. An AR platform is a good example. The platform itself is right about 140 db from port pop, action noise, so a 120 db can really doesn’t matter.

Yeah. But the reality is many users are going to use it with ear plugs most of the time. Then practices without earpro. Then hunt without earpro. Getting the DB as low as possible preserves your hearing. We might hit the lower limit at a certain weight/cost, but that’s the can you want.

ARs are never hearing safe. So it’s an outlier.