Fire your bare muzzle AR a couple afternoons without hearing protection and you won't notice the noise from a muzzle brake any more (nor much of anything else).

Short of hanging 8 pounds of sand bags off the front of my rifle the muzzle brake does a darn good job of keeping the barrel on target. Even my 13 pound target rifle flips off of a 6 inch target at 100 yards without a brake unless I'm sitting in a bipod or bunny bag. With a brake I can see the bullet's impact even shooting freehand.

My pre-ban wears a Phantom flash suppressor and it seems fully as loud as Armalite brake but not as loud as my AR with AK brake - under 31 dB of EARs foamies and 21 dB of Pro-ears noise reduction. I think the Armalite shoots the noise off to the sides more than back at the shooter like the AK brake. The Phantom is pretty similar to a bare muzzle no matter where you stand.

I hate being on the line next to one[V] It's not the noise, but the redirected muzzle blast that is so bad.

I don't want to get physical here - I mean I don't want to get too deep into physics here but brakes don't create more noise they simple redirect it. Suppressors (silencers) reduce sound signatures.

The bullet is pushed down the barrel by a column of hot rapidly expanding gas. Our ears are designed to detect changes in air pressure (sound). When the bullet leaves the barrel the column of gas is released from the barrel and continues to expand in the air outside the confines of the barrel. This causes the pressure of the air to rise dramatically and we hear a gun blast.

A brake is designed to redirect some of the expanding gas in a different direction - most direct the gas do it to the sides with some let out the top to counter the muzzle flip with each shot. Watch someone shoot a full auto without a compensator on it and you'll see that typically muzzle flip from a right-handed shooter is upwards and to the right. A well designed muzzle brake sends some of the gas upwards and old Newton's first law comes into effect - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - and the rising gas drives the barrel downwards. If the engineer has done his work the brake counters nearly all of the recoil and the muzzle flip and you end up with a rifle that "sticks" to the target.

The support hand should [b]not[/b] be used to hold the handguards rather the hand is used to just support the rifle. If you're gripping them tight enough to counter the muzzle flip then you've got WAY too much pressure on them and will more then likely cause a vertical stringing of shots caused by the flinch transmitted by your support hand.

Jim Crew's excellent book "Urban Carbine" is recommended for more information on holding the rifle.