as mentioned earlier there are an awful lot of variables in making a bow quiet, note that I do not say noise-free.
As a
generalizations I'd opine that:
A
well tuned one piece wood recurve will be quieter than a TD.
A
well tuned wood three piece with a SOLID, two or three bolt limb mounting system will be quieter than one with one bolt and a peg and probably quieter than many metal risered 3 piece TDs.
A DAS was
specifically designed to be a quiet hunting bow and will be easier to get quiet for most shooters than an ILF metal riser bow. After all the DAS is a solid 2-bolt system and was designed with noise attenuating ads in the "pocket" floor. Some of the metal ILFs were built more like banjos that bows in some regards.
A shoot from the shelf set-up will be quieter than many metal elevated rests.
You can figure that the more "things" there are on the bow the more potentialities they can be noise generators and require more effort to make/keep quiet
However the end result is always a result of the combination of ALL the factors and the skill of the person setting them up. A poor set up of course, can reverse any or all of the generalities I suggest.
There can be any number of noise sources aside from just the riser and limb set and setup. Bow attachments can add noise, poor string choice and setup (more properly included in "well-tuned" I guess) arrow weight and material, string to arrow nock fit, glove or tab material and configuration, there there is the archer him (or her)-self-----its amazing/amusing what some archers unconsciously do while shooting.
bear in mind as a hunter, that not all noise is the same on the range as it is in the woods--thank goodness--and that some noises are more natural and less likely to cause a 'stage three alert" than others (one reason I gave up aluminum arrows many years ago).
My own quietest TD bow is a short 14" Morrison solid phenolic riser shot off the shelf with Bob's carbon foam LB limbs; but its pretty well set-up, on release there is nothing but the hiss of the arrow in flight and the thunk of it hitting the target. It's darn near as quiet with a set of Border hex-4s--- but that took a little work. Next is my original DAS MASTER with any number of different limbs, but again more stuff to tune and set up---but it doesn't spook deer (not saying that I don't on occasion--but that's not the bow's fault
)
Oddly enough my saluki, when I could still shoot it, was amazingly quiet and easy to set up.