The high price - yeah if you just look at it like $76 worth of materials...... But you have some tight tolerance machining in there with relatively low volumes. You also have some welding & finishing. Lot of labor. It also didn't design, test, improve, itself multiple times to get best performance vs size/weight. Lots of engineering there. Someone like SilencerCo or Dead Air Armament, they're not making anything else, so need good margins. Not like say Sig who could offset a bad year of suppressor sales with good sales somewhere else.
Mine is a form-1, so the design and machining all free (assuming $0 for me as a hobby machinist). 4130 chromemoly tube, 416 stainless caps & baffles, cerakote. Maybe $100 in material. But that's like saying the lathe, mill, measuring tools, Cerakote setup, scarp/cutoffs, etc is all free along with my time.
Anyway, to OP, I'd go with smaller diameter, shorter length, lighter weight. I made mine big & heavy because I wanted excellent sound reduction. Well even "excellent" is "loud AF" for a .223. Don't really want to take more than a couple shots w/o hearing protection. Much better than nothing, but still far from hearing safe. Because I don't like the extra 8" length or all that weight out front, I don't use it much. But will frequently use rimfire, 9mm, 300BLK, etc - but .223 not a good tradeoff. If I had to do over (sadly cannot on a form-1 build) since loud is loud, and a little less loud is still loud, compact would be my thing.
I can drink a quart of monkey and still stand still...
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