Augustinus wrote: Will an improper brace height affect the behavior of the arrow? ….Or is the adjustment solely to quiet the bow, or both?

An improper brace height will definitely affect the behavior of the arrow (and the bow), and the farther you are from the ideal brace height, the more noticeable the effects will be. Brace height is one of the most important factors in proper tuning, and it’s worth spending the time to “dial it in” properly, as the benefits will be obvious. It will also help eliminate a lot of frustration with other aspects of tuning, and with accuracy.

If you’re currently at 8″ from the deepest part of the grip, you’re getting close already, and I would imagine you’re already seeing quite different behavior from both your arrow and your bow. Now it’s going to be a matter of more subtlety, until you find that ‘sweet spot.’

Do you currently have silencers on the bow? If so, I find that they can hinder initial tuning. You want to find that ideal brace height without any other factors playing a role in quieting the bow, if possible. Then, once your brace height is good, you can think about adding the silencers again. Keep in mind however, that there are additional things to consider when putting the silencers on as well, but you can get to that later, and if you do a search on here, you will find some good threads on that subject.

Believe it or not, this stuff really isn’t all that complicated, although it might seem that way at the beginning! But once you start playing around with it, and figure it out, proper tuning really ony comes down to a few factors to play around with, and much of it will just start to seem like ‘common sense’ after a while.