When playing paintball, it is always better to use a quiet paintball barrel for obvious reasons. Reasons being that you don’t want your opponent to know where you are shooting from, so that they won’t know where you are and you will be harder to locate.
It doesn’t matter if you are on a speedball field or a jungle field, it is almost always better to be quiet. When it comes to the science, there are a few factors to consider when looking for a quiet paintball barrel.
Porting means the ports or holes on a paintball barrel. The more ports it has, the quieter it is because the sound can escape out of more areas. Less ports means that there are less areas for the sound to escape which would automatically mean a louder shot.
The size of the ports also makes a difference. The bigger the ports, the louder the sound and the smaller the ports, the quieter the sound.
So in essence, an optimum combination of port size as well as number of ports contributes greatly to the amount of sound that is produced with each shot.
The shorter the barrel, the louder the sound. Lengthier barrels like 16″ or longer tend to produce a more silent shot. This is due to the fact that the sound needs to travel a further distance, thus becoming quieter with each shot.
This also makes a big difference. Players think that it is solely due to the barrel. That is wrong. A spool valve gun compared to a tube stack would be much quieter. This is due to less moving parts and the bolt is housed inside the gun, thereby muffling the shot.
In this example, using the same manufacturer, say Planet Eclipse which produces a tube stack gun (EGO) and a spool valve gun (GEO), the GEO would be much quieter than the EGO. There are other trade offs of course, but the focus of this article is on the quietness of a paintball barrel.
Obviously, a mechanical gun would be much more louder than a low pressure electronic gun.
So to sum this up, if you want to decide from a range of quiet paintball barrels, choose one that has decent sized ports (not too small or you will affect air efficiency, not too big as well because you will waste air!), a 14″ to 16″ in length is good, longer might be too long and then make sure you shoot a low pressure electronic marker.
Good luck!
