Indoor Plinking and Soundproofing Advice

[Guest Mr. No_Face]

Hi there, first post in this forum. I'm a paintballer who recently converted to Airsoft and am enjoying the perks of the sport including Indoor plinking.  Just wondering how you guys go about mitigating some of the noise the IFs make. Since I'm new to the sport I was recommended by friends to go for an affordable and reliable AEG, platform such as the ARP-9 or the Firehawk M4 ( Both are extremely loud guns).  I removed the flash hider from my firehawk and replace it with a foam filled suppressor which has reduced the noise a lot but has anyone here used soundproofing material such as foam panels on walls to create a nice noise cancelling, shooting area?

 

If so how did you guys go about doing so and what methods actually work? I'd love to be able to practice shooting without worrying about my house mates complaining!

(Absolutely hate the two tone look on guns) 😒

[Shamal]

Hi and welcome 🙂

Glad to hear you have left the dark side and come into the light lol.

Noise?noise? What your are actually hearing is what we airsofters like to call mech music.(you gotta love it)right?

Yes the arp9 is a loud fucker an no mistake but great gnu.

Seems a lot of work to create a sound proof room,just turn the radio up! Lol

Get a tm mk23 NBB pistol with suppressor they are silent 👍

As for your house mates,shoot them in the feckin' arse, that way they'll stop complaining about the noise I guarantee it!

🤭😉

Have fun....🙂

Regards 

[Albiscuit]

You literally chose the two loudest guns 😂

 

I know a bit about soundproofing but it’s been years since I had to use any of it. It can be expensive to do it properly. Luckily for Airsoft you wouldn’t need to do it like a music studio.

Foam panels, egg boxes, even heavy fabric should muffle the noise enough to not bother anyone in the next room.

 

You need to work out if you think it’s really worth the cost and/or effort though. How often are you hoping to shoot inside, how big is your room, also what are you doing to mitigate ricochets if you have breakables in the same room? 

[Iceni]

I'd say it all starts with the gearbox. Component selection and setup can take an awful lot of the noise away.

Piston head - POM plastic heads are far quieter than the metal equivalents. Add a sorbo pad to the cylinder head or go with a POM silent head system and it will take the pop of the gearbox and reduce it to a much lower sounding thud.

Gearing - Low ratio gears don't spin as fast (13:1), The correct motors for those gears (HT) also don't spin as fast. So there is less chatter on the geartrain.

Motor engagement - A correctly setup bevel to pinion will be much quieter than a badly meshing set. A well set bevel will have very little scratchy sound.

Shimming - The better the gears are shimmed the quieter the gearbox will be.

Once the gearbox is perfect then the rest of the gun is pretty easy. If you have space you can add sound damping on the gearbox walls, And a decent foam suppressor will take the gun down a bit at the muzzle as well. It's a lot of work but you can end up with a very quiet gun. And it's far less invasive than attempting to soundproof a room.



 

[Guest Mr. No_Face]

Thanks for the response fellas.

@Shamal Yeah, leaving paintballing was pretty easy. Less bruises, less cleaning and Airsoft is way cooler when it comes to personalization.🤙
lol about the housemates. I decided to just plink with the TV up. The gun with the suppressor on is also not as loud as I thought apparently so everyone is cool with me plinking indoors. My room is pretty hollow so the sound echoes making it seem a lot louder than it actually is.

@Albiscuit I actually plink pretty often since I work from home. Whenever I'm bored I just end up shooting some targets I've bought or made.
I prevent ricochets with this scruffy box 'n target set up although the BBs can occasionally bounce off auto reset targets.

@Iceni I'm also considering making those internal adjustments you mentioned since I think those would benefit me in the long run. 

[EDcase]

Put some rugs up on the walls

 

I helped make a sound recording booth years ago with the Convoluted Acoustic Foam (Egg box foam)

Its so weird not to have any reverb at all so may affect your sanity long term 🙃

But it would be quite expensive to do a whole room.

 

You could just do the common walls to other rooms...

[Guest Mr. No_Face]

That could be worth trying. I just so happen to have a random rug in my room that serves no real purpose.👌

[EDcase]

It will definitely help.

Simplest way to put up would be 3 nails/screws.  One each end and one middle.

[emit]

For plinking indoors as it was already suggested get a cheap as in £40-50 Stti or Asg MK23, stuff the included suppressor with foam and it will be very quiet.

Neighbours don't like me shooting the AEG in the garden while they are in their garden but they seem to have no idea when I'm plinking with my MK23.