Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturer of the new Victra 20-gauge shotgun suppressor. 2026 has flown by, and it is once again time to look at some data from the Thunder Beast Silencer Summit. This is an event where manufacturers decibel-test their products in the same place on the same equipment, so the data is as comparable as can be. Let’s go through the results and see what happened this year.
Silencer Saturday @ TFB:
Sound testing for silencers is a tricky game. Decibels, the unit used to measure sound, are not the most comprehensible unit. They also do not align perfectly with perceived sound levels. On top of the issues with decibels as a measurement, some silencer testing has been, at best, questionable, and at worst, deceptive. Not all sound meters are up to the task of measuring sound impulses as fast as those produced by gunshots, and there are a variety of ways to mess up the test setup.
Thunder Beast Arms Corp (TBAC) has a simple solution to some of those issues. Bring any manufacturer who wants to participate together and let them test their cans on the same test setup under the same conditions. The test gun sits in a fixture, which also holds the microphones for muzzle measurements.
Participation is high, and with 275 suppressors tested during the event, it was not possible to get them all done in one day. This year’s summit lasted five days. That is a lot of testing and data. Here are some interesting takeaways.
New Market Entrants
The silencer market is expanding rapidly, with many companies both old and new rushing to meet the demand caused by free tax stamps. And the complicated but promising court order that has some dealers transferring cans on just a 4473 seems likely to speed that trend further, especially if the ambiguities in that order are resolved.
This trend is clear in the list of participants, which includes many names that are totally new, as well as companies that have added silencers to their lineups. EOTech is the most prominent of these, having debuted their DCBL series of silencers at SHOT 2026. Both their 5.56 and .30 caliber options ranked in the middle of the pack for each host gun.
Ambient Arms, which also debuted at SHOT 2026, had their Exo Ti silencer tested at the Summit. That suppressor uses an interesting air-cooling system to draw air through the silencer to cool it more rapidly. The dB scores were good, but that showed that the cooling system does not have an adverse impact on suppression
Newer market segments also showed up in the data. .223 and .30-caliber silencers have always been the two most common, but there is some real action in the 6mm category. There were ten silencers in this bracket. The popularity of certain 6mm cartridges in PRS competition, as well as the popularity of the 6mm ARC, explain some of that popularity.
Size Matters
The data for each silencer is not limited to sound performance. Both the length and diameter are also included, as well as a calculated volume based on those measurements. That volume does not account for the internal space taken up by baffles, but it does provide a rough approximation of how much internal space is available for gas expansion. Large silencers are usually quieter than small ones simply because there is more volume to work with.
What is interesting in the results table is where the volume measurement does not line up with the performance number. The Wraith Metal Works Sentinel Socom-MK2 had the second-best average dB rating for silencers tested on the 5.56 host gun. It also had one of the largest internal volumes at 22.13 cubic inches. The Airlock Zero Gravity Nano, a silencer I’ve never heard of, was in the top half with a volume of only 5.83 cubic inches. That is a tiny little 3D-printed titanium can primarily for hunting rifles. At under four ounces, that is a lot of suppression in a small package.
Volume is obviously not the entire story, but it is a good way to look at efficiency. If two silencers are the same size but one is much quieter, it is doing something more efficiently with that internal space. If two silencers are very different in volume but put up similar numbers, the smaller one is probably a more advanced design rather than a stack of traditional baffles. But that design and manufacturing work is generally more expensive, and it can make enough of an impact to price some buyers out of those options.
Newer Isn’t Always “Better”
One of the most interesting sets of data is the results for the Surefire rifle cans. The RC-2 is a legendary design. It has an unmatched reputation for durability, though it is now a dated design. The new Surefire RC-4 is a vented design with reduced backpressure. In this testing, the RC-2 outperformed the RC-4 in sound reduction by a fair margin. If you prioritize sound suppression, the RC-2 is probably the better choice. But if you accept some additional noise but want to cut down on backpressure, the RC-4 may still be the better choice.
While decibel testing will always be hampered by the nature of decibels as a measurement unit, having a lot of testing using the same setup does provide a useful set of facts. One data point that would be a great addition to this test would be an indication of whether each silencer is a traditional or low backpressure/vented model. Those boundary lines are not always clear, but this would play a similar role to the volume measurement. Knowing that a silencer is vented out the front can help, but its performance in context. Thanks for joining us, we will see you back here next week.
DEALERS: If you want your link to buy YHM suppressors included in future Silencer Saturday posts, email: [email protected]
