Hey guys, my fiends and I now have a decent collection of firearms and I thought I should record some of the sounds and release 'em royalty free, as most of the ones I've found on the net are crap. Can anyone recommend a microphone capable of recording a 30-06 calibre round in all its glory? I'd imagine most microphones would wash out completely on something that loud - we require earmuffs at all times, else we'd go deaf. I could try standing at various distances though and recording a plain old .22 rifle, it still creates that nice echo effect at the range. Had a search for previous threads, found this one, seems like a USB based microphone is the way to go? I don't necessarily want to spend the big bucks, or lug around a massive rig. Might just make a few recordings with what I've got and see how it goes.

Really, nothing is as good and as simple as a USB mic for portable use. It gets power, can pick up some good quality and level of sound, and all with only one cord. However, I've never tried recording something as loud as a 30-06 - it's right on the edge of what I can stand without ear protection, and it would utterly destroy any of my microphones ability to record.

Of course, you will get better results with a full rig... but you don't want that (neither do I, for that matter - it's a huge hassle).

So, no advice for a specific mic! How helpful is that [smile]. Just agreeing with the usefulness of a good USB mic.



One other note... remember that a rifle round will only echo if the bullet passes through (such as a paper target) or misses a target (say, a zombie). If it embeds in a person or animal in an open field, there will be almost no echo. Of course, if it passes a tree or wall, it will create a second crack from that tree or wall. Not really important in the scheme of things... [grin]

I think the most important part of getting any good gunshot sound is not relying on a single sample to do the work but instead remembering to layer the sound a lot. Like Avatar God said, you'd probably wreck havok on most mics due to the loud SPLs a gun puts out. With that said though, if I were to try making sounds of gunshots, I'd probably setup a dynamic microphone (e.g., SM57) as a close mic to capture more the crack of the gunfire, then setup a pair of spaced omni condensers to get more the tail sound of the gunshot. Also I'd try to get other sounds depending on the gun, such as the sound of the hammer, the slide, etc., then combine all those to create a single gunshot. Don't know how that'd work out, but that would be where I'd start off from.