Hi you awesome peoples, I am one of the sound effects devs on the rising storm team. My job is to record and produce highly realistic gunsounds for the upcoming Rising Storm Mod. However, I want to have your opinion on the type of gun sounds you all prefer.
OMG... at last my chance!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE find a rifle range or something that allows you to set up in the butts (where the target is) and record what the gunfire sounds like from 300, 200 and 100m. When you get up at 300m you can barely hear the actual report of the gun firing, and it has a noticeable delay.
From the perspective of the guys being shot at, the MOST noise, BY FAR, comes from the high frequency cracks of bullets breaking the sound barrier as they pass by, followed a distant second by the sound of the round impacting and the gun firing. A method of using these sounds to locate the source of firs is called "crack-thump" after the sounds. The crack is the bullet's sonic boom, and the thump is the gun.
I spent a lot of time running around in the butts listening to high velocity rifle fire passing by two feet away, and it sounds NOTHING like anyone has ever put in a movie or game that I have heard. It really sounds like the loudest string of firecrackers you ever heard.
When you hear most recordings of rifle fire, most of the sound is not the gun at all. You can hear echoes that appear to be the gunshot echoing back at you, but are in fact the sonic boom from the round echoing. That is why silenced weapons need to use subsonic rounds if they really want to be "silent".
It's this incredible series of high pitched cracks that makes your heart pound and your ears ring when the bullets are passing that close to you, NOT the sounds of the gun.
This has the added effect of helping you to tell where the fire is coming from, and even how close it is. You hardly ever hear that whizzing sound of a ricocheting round (the whiz is caused by the bullet tumbling at high speed), and if enough fire is coming your way, you can't hear a person shouting in your ear.
No game or movie has come even close to truly simulating the sound of combat, IMHO, mostly because everyone thinks the noise comes from the gun, rather than the bullet itself. If someone is over 300m away, you may not hear the gun at all. All you hear is the "CRACK CRACK CRACK" of the bullets missing you by feet.
THAT is intense. I am desperate to hear a game (or even a movie) that sounds the same as when I was in the butts at the rifle range. Saving Private Ryan came close, but they still missed how noisy it is (or subdued it... actors like to talk, after all), and they still thought that the only time the bullet made noise was when it ricocheted and as such far too much "whiizz" and not enough "crack".
IMHO, the sounds of the gun are far less important than the sounds of the bullets, at least if you are trying to simulate the real chaos of battle.
Think of those old westerns where you had some guy up a cliff firing a rifle. You hear this crack and that sort of warble sound that reverberates for some time after the shot. That reverb is NOT the gunshot. That is the sound of the bullet flying down range. If the bullet doesn't go far, you don't hear that noise for as long if at all.
Think of the "crack" as being a tearing sound that follows along with the bullet. It passes by so quick, all you hear is a crack, but the noise is constant... it's just moving down range with the bullet. That is the reverb sound that you hear if you are near the gun when it fires. You can test how much of that noise comes from the bullet simply by firing the same round at a 20m target and a 300m target. You will hear the difference that can only be because the bullet is making the noise longer before impact. The length of echo of the gun shot should not be different depending on range unless the sound is actually coming from the bullet.
This raises an interesting point. The size and power of the bullet does change how the bullet sounds travelling down range, as does the speed. A subsonic round won't make much noise if any, and as such is very hard to locate the source of. Many pistol calibre bullets are subsonic, so if any of the weapons in the game fire subsonic rounds, they will not cause that crack sound so you'll be able to tell the difference between high velocity rounds rifle and MG and low velocity pistol and SMG rounds.
Of course if the bullet is supersonic, it must cause a sonic boom, and thus the "crack".
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I know I'm being a little verbose, but this is such a big deal for me that I really want to get it all out there.
Just to explain the logic behind how the relative noise levels should be, consider what is actually causing each noise.
In the sound of the actual gunshot, you have the rapid expansion of a limited amount of gas that causes a shockwave to travel out spherically from the exploding powder. The shockwave rapidly loses power because the gas only expands so far.
The crack sound is caused by a shockwave forming behind the bullet that travels along with it, shifting air all along the flight path of the bullet. So much more air is moved by that shockwave, that it only makes logical sense that it should be the most loud sound heard by anyone that isn't pretty close to the muzzle when it fires, or if the bullet doesn't travel far (shifting less air).
Does that make sense? Actually, another way to hear the sound of the gun vs the sound of the bullet is to fire blanks through a blank firing attachment. The gunshot itself is just as loud (simulating real gunfire for the firer) but It sounds far less menacing and rather pathetic the further you get away from it. But fire a live round and suddenly the noise is much fuller and more powerful and seems to fill the air all around you.
This is why movie and game gunfire never sounds quite right. They record a shot from beside the rifle, then simply adjust the volume to simulate distance. But the real sound actually changes, the crack sound staying a constant volume but moving, while the thump sound fades over distance. So just by making it quieter, you don't capture the sound of the bullet itself properly, and the uncanny valley feeling kicks in.
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Last edit, sorry
The crack sound is the shockwave, and it is behind the bullet by some distance. That shockwave is the "feeling" you get from the bullet passing. So by the time you hear and feel the bullet pass by, it is long gone.