BBC Sound Effects Library - 177 Gun Sound Effects

Gunshot Sound Effects

Welcome to the Avosound Gunshot sound effect archive. This comprehensive sound category includes a huge selection of firearms and gun sounds.

Shotgun Sound Effects, Guns, Pistols and Cannon Sounds

Starting with James Bond's Walter PPK, there are a variety of pistols, revolvers, shotguns, muskets, guns, colts, armor cannons, historical guns, carabiners and rifles. We are not just collecting gunshot sound effects, you will also find a wide variety of handling and manipulation sounds of guns: locking guns, unlocking, handling, loading magazines, loading bullets, pressing triggers, as well as all sorts of metal sounds from guns, pistols and rifles!

Revolver and Pistols

There is a wide variety of pistol and revolver sounds and shots in the Avosound Online Sound Library. We have sounds and records from many different calibers, also shots with and without silencer. There are pistols from Walter, Magnum revolvers, Smith And Wesson, Baretta, Cowboy and Western Revolvers. The Sounddogs and Rob Nokes sound libraries, which all are online in the Avosound online library, provides a wide variety of shots, gunshot, bullet fly bys, handling with pistols and shotguns and much more. Also of course, the Uzi belongs in the library.

Gunshot Sound Effect

Gunshot sound effect are recorded outside and als field recording to get the most realistic sounds for your production. Gunshot sound effect can have long natural reverb, depending on the location where the gunshots are recoded. The Rob Nokes Sound Effects Library provides a wide variety of gunshot sound effects, recorded in valleys or in open fields. Loud gunshot sounds produces a loud and thunderclap like reverb tail which is nice and very natural.
When recording a gunshot sound effect, the recording location is very important. The gunshot sound effects in this selection were recorded in quiet valleys, also in the wintertime to reduce unwanted noise like sounds from crickets, vehicles or other things. This gunshot sounds can be used as sweeteners to add the tail reverb to a more dry gunshot sound, recorded from location or from another recording.

Gunshot Sound Effects from Rifles

Rifles produces very nice and loud shots to record gunshot sound effects. If you want to have an even louder and more thunder-like gunshot, you have to increase the size of the gun! Shotguns does not sound that loud than rifles. Also pistols does not produce that loud gunshots. Machine guns creates a rhythmic series of loud and intense gunshots, bigger guns like cannons or artillery guns can make a extremely loud gunshot sounds.

How To Record Gunshot Sound Effect?

If you have the chance to record gunshots, make sure to record from different distances and with different recorders and channels. If you record gunshot sound effects in a valley or an open field, place a pair of stereo microphones close to the gun, another pair in a bigger distance to the gunshot and if you have the chance, place on pair of stereo microphones far away in the valley to record the gunshot sound effect tail or reverb. Another option to record gunshot sound effect is, to turn one pair of microphones off-axis, so with the front side of the microphone pointing away form the gunshot, to record the guns reverb only, not the direct gunshot sound effect signal.

Recording Gun Shots with dynamic Microphones

Guns can produce extremely loud sound pressure levels. So it's absolutely important to protect your ears. This very loud and very short impulses of a gunshot sound effect are difficult to handle for microphones. Microphones have problem with such a wide dynamic range. Condenser Microphones are more sensitive than the cheeper dynamic versions. Older condenser microphones can be damaged if they get too high sound pressure levels. So the closer you are to the gun, the louder the sound pressure will be.
Due to their design, dynamic microphones are slower than the condenser microphones in converting the sound into an electrical signal. Therefore, dynamic microphones have a natural compression that compress the signal on a natural way. So, dynamic microphones can provide a better and cleaner signal when recording very loud sound pressure levels, which gunshot sound effect are. Thus, dynamic microphones can provide distortion-free recording at very loud sound pressure levels, whereas older condenser microphones come to their limit and in the worst case, they could break. The choice of the microphone here is also an aesthetic thing, because this compression of the signal, as dynamic microphones do it naturally modifies that signal.

Where to find Gunshot Sound Effects?

The Avosound Online Sound Effects Library contains a wide variety of gunshot sound effect. You can find good old vintage gunshot sounds in the BBC Sound Effects Library. BBC collects gunshot sound effects from rifles, hand guns, anti aircraft guns for world war 2, pistols and revolvers. A great range from gunshot sounds can be found in the Rob Nokes Libraries as well as in the Sounddogs Library. Rob Nokes did some great gunshot sound effect from rifles and shotguns, recorded in valley and canyons with some great tail reverb. Check out the Mossberg 3 Inch Shell gunshot sound effects with great natural reverb or the gunshots with the Winchester 405 Shots in the mountains. Gunshot sound effects can be downloaded in the Avosound online sound library with many other related sounds to gunshots: pistol and rifle shots, gunshots with and without reverb, gunshots from tanks and cannons and much more.