Bushmaster Stag

Why is my AR-15 louder than the others?

I own a Bushmaster AR-15 with 16 inch barrel, with the free floating handguard, and custom accurized barrel. I went to American Shooting Centers yesterday and eight other guys at the range took their AR-15′s too. Their AR-15′s were the regular kind you would find, with the plastic handguard instead of the free floating handguard I have, they had DPMS, Stag Arms, SOG Armory, and 1 Armalite AR-15.
After I finished shooting and we had a 5 minute break at the gun range. They walked up to me and asked me what made my gun louder than theirs because we were all shooting the same cartridge .223/5.56, but I didn’t know what to tell them. Does a free floating barrel and handguard make your gun louder?
My ammo is not custom, I was shooting the regular 55 grain ammo made by Remington UMC that is sold at Wal-Mart.
I was also shooting next to the wall.

A free floating barrel and handguard would not have an effect on the report of your weapon. Were you using any different kind of ammunition? Did you have the same type of muzzle break?

EDIT: In a firearm, there are two places where noise comes from when fired: the muzzle and the breach. Most of it comes out of the barrel so if ammo is the same, I would start looking at what makes your muzzle different from theirs.

Also, were you at the end of the line or near a wall? Often times if you are near a wall, the sound can bounce off and be redirected making it sound louder than it is.

EDIT 2: Then that is your answer. Muzzle breaks and flash hiders mainly work in hiding the flash, but by doing so they also redirect sound, usually either to the sides, up, down, or even back towards the shooter. This helps lessen the report in the direction of the target.

More than likely the sound was being redirected at the wall, then bouncing back towards the other shooters and combined with the other sound coming from the other side of the muzzle, this caused it to appear louder.

Think of it like the difference between firing a gun in the open outdoors vs firing it inside a small box. It is going to sound 100x louder.

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