Quote History Quoted:
A barrel that short in 300 Blackout may not Stabilize some rounds, especially Subs. AAC used 9" as a minimum for General round Stabilization.
View Quote
Yeah, I've been researching this issue for awhile, almost cross-eyed from reading...LOL! Gotta agree on the 9" area being more optimal for shooting both. For the most part it looked like 8.5" was generally the shortest worth going to. I just ordered a 9.5" 1:7 barrel from Ballistic Advantage which will mainly run suppressed, but since I reload I will probably dabble with supers also. I just borrowed a friend's 16" 300 BO and shot it with supers and subs with and without suppressor. I could see going with the longer barrel if shooting supers only.
Still, if you do read a bunch of results from many different shooters, you'll get a lot of different opinions and experiences. Some of that is probably due to different twist rates, gas port sizes, gas system lengths, and ammo. Since I wanted almost exclusive suppressor use, I went with the 9.5, but I would have been fine with 8, 8.5, or 10.5. While researching this I saw almost nothing about 6.5" barrels. I think if it were the hot setup for a given use, I would have seen more about it. But who knows?