The fader on my field recorder does not have numbers, does anyone know?

[Dave Baker]

Near where I live we have an army training area, a rifle range and a USAF base which also has a clay pigeon range. Years ago when I was a lad, the army youth team took us to that rifle range, it was a youth club thing, where I had the privilege of shooting both Bren guns and SLRs at the butts. I was already used to shotguns. We had to both shoot and do a spell at marking in the butts too. And remember to keep our heads down! As Brian says, they surely sound different both from each other and which end you hear then from. We hear them quite regularly from the house.

What I was wondering was if someone like you, Paul, could get permission to go on to one of the ranges on a firing day and record gunshots. Just a thought and no help to Ryan at all.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Does every US car shreak turning in or out of their driveways or swapping lanes on highways. Do they all squeal when you slam the brakes on?

This is one of my pet peeves. I've watched old TV shows where the tires squeal when driving on dirt roads (while throwing up a lot of dust, indicating the surface wasn't even tightly packed), on grassy fields, etc. I recently watched an old episode of Danger Man wherein a big sedan slowly pulled up to the curb and gently stopped; the scene was accompanied with about five seconds of continuous tire squeal. That's pretty obviously a "manufactured" sound; I can't imagine how anyone could get tires to squeal for that long a time even if they tried.

[Josh Bass]

challenge accepted

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. Well I could try and create the gunshots from other things, other than gunshots, but I still thought I would need real gunshots as a baseline for the sound effect. Unless I don't, and the actual shot, doesn't make much of a difference, even as a baseline?

[Brian Drysdale]

This seems to be a lot of messing around, you can buy library gun shots, they will have a better range than the free online ones.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, it's just you hear these sounds in several other movies, so I am wondering will it come off as dated or heard before and less original therefore?

[Brian Drysdale]

Guns sound like guns, I doubt that you're going to come up with such a stunningly original films that requires an entirely new gun shot, If the audience is thinking that your guns sound the same as in such and such a movie, you've totally failed because they aren't involved in either the story or the characters.

[Ryan Elder]

That's true. Well I was told that the gun shots I recorded sound like paintball guns by other people or something of that sory, they said. But I can look at other sources and packages if that's better.

[Ryan Elder]

But at 1:11 in this clip for example:

Fully Automatic Machine Gun Blast! - YouTube

The gunshot sounds much better than the ones I recorded, so are they adding in post effects a lot to make it better then?

[Paul R Johnson]

Sound travels at 300m per second. So what you have is the sound of the ignition and escape from the muzzle, mixed with the sound of the other exit paths for the gas and the mechanism, PLUS the sound of that pressure wave reflecting back. Do you really think the general public are skilled in anything apart from making a picture to a sound? If you wanted to get that sound from a library, the. You need to match the general size of the weapon, and the environment. The experts can tell from the sound exactly what it is, but all I see and hear is a match. Someone could come up with a statement that we see an XYZ mk 1with an ABC super gizmo fitted to the gas exchanger but we're hearing the XYZ without the gizmo, and the producer should be shot with it for making such an error, but these people should have better things to do.

Did you also notice the microphone didn't disintegrate and the camera was quite close.

Ryan, you're having one of your meltdowns over something unimportant. Did you not once show a clip of very badly done muzzle flashes? You didn't get steamed up about that, but now your almost panicking about a problem that probably won't exist if you just shoot it normally. Remember in Star Wars when they said "trust your feelings, Luke"? Can you imagine if he'd said "ask as many random people as you can, Luke. Then ask even more if the first group were right?"

[Brian Drysdale]

What type of weapon did you record? Pistols tend to sound less impressive than rifles etc because of the lower muzzle velocity.

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Sound travels at 300m per second. So what you have is the sound of the ignition and escape from the muzzle, mixed with the sound of the other exit paths for the gas and the mechanism, PLUS the sound of that pressure wave reflecting back. Do you really think the general public are skilled in anything apart from making a picture to a sound? If you wanted to get that sound from a library, the. You need to match the general size of the weapon, and the environment. The experts can tell from the sound exactly what it is, but all I see and hear is a match. Someone could come up with a statement that we see an XYZ mk 1with an ABC super gizmo fitted to the gas exchanger but we're hearing the XYZ without the gizmo, and the producer should be shot with it for making such an error, but these people should have better things to do.

Did you also notice the microphone didn't disintegrate and the camera was quite close.

Ryan, you're having one of your meltdowns over something unimportant. Did you not once show a clip of very badly done muzzle flashes? You didn't get steamed up about that, but now your almost panicking about a problem that probably won't exist if you just shoot it normally. Remember in Star Wars when they said "trust your feelings, Luke"? Can you imagine if he'd said "ask as many random people as you can, Luke. Then ask even more if the first group were right?"

Oh okay, well the camera is close in the clip but I cannot tell where the microphone is placed, because you cannot see it. I cannot be certain the mic was the same distance as the camera. But I will get the mic closer if that's better. However, if I go closer than 12 feet the audio gets close to clipping, so I will have to get one of those attenuators first of course.

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

What type of weapon did you record? Pistols tend to sound less impressive than rifles etc because of the lower muzzle velocity.

I recorded a SKS Simonov and some other rifles, people had. I also recorded a type of 12 gauge pump action shotgun, but do not know the exact model type.

[Brian Drysdale]

You will need to experiment again and find some sort of mic sweet spot.

This is probably why they often use library gun shots, because of the time involved in getting good recordings.

[Paul R Johnson]

I don't want to muddy the waters Ryan, but remember that the pad between the mic and the preamp reduces the high output to match the pre-amp stage better - BUT - and it's quite important, the microphone capsule and it's associated internal preamp can still be driven to distortion, and the pad will do nothing to prevent this. I get it occasionally with mics we put out for feeding room sound into IEM systems and sometimes the mic gets moved too close to the PA subs - usually an accident, and we don't notice, and the subs might be running pretty loud when you are close - 140dB on the meter very close in. Condensers get overwhelmed and as this excessive level is at the bass end they sort of go woolly and very strange in sympathy with the bass content. They don't get destroyed but the sound is distorted IN the mic, so a pad in the cable is no use whatsoever.

Probably best to pay no attention to this post Ryan - but don't think pads are a cure for everything.