A Bit of Background
My fiancée’s father likes guns. Dare I say, he loves guns. With a professional background in one of the USA’s prestigious law enforcement agencies, he is highly trained and highly armed. On top of that, his personal collection includes some rather one-of-a-kind weapons: from modified pistols designed for concealment to dizzingly accurate rifles to a submachine gun that spits out over 1100 rounds per minute.
As a recordist, guns are of particular interest when it comes to capturing their sound. Guns are loud. Recording them accurately requires a few considerations that most conventional recording scenarios don’t. This blog post will dive into the planning, preparation, recording, editing, and organization of the recordings from my first session working with them.
One more thing… firearms are dangerous. Lethal. This recording session was conducted under the direct supervision and advisory of someone with rigorously trained professional experience dating back to well before I was born. There is a gravity to recording and operating firearms that I can not attempt to express in words here. Be careful.
Pre-Planning Resources
Before deciding what mics, recorders, stands, cables, and other equipment I would be bringing, there was an essential first step:
Binging other articles and podcasts on recording guns.
This guide by Chuck Russom, this episode of the Tonebenders podcast, and this post on ASoundEffect were hugely helpful. I also reached out directly to a number of highly experienced field recordists for advice; extra special shoutouts to Brian Fieser and Paul Boechler. I also borrowed some additional equipment from a good friend of mine, and no slouch of a recordist either, Matt Tracy.
The Gear Part
Carefully planning out the equipment I had available in my personal collection and the handful of items I borrowed from Matt Tracy was crucial for keeping to a tight schedule and not wasting time in the field. Feel free to skip this section if you don’t care about gear things, I won’t take offense.
Mic Placement
Sennheiser MKH418S - This mic is currently the desert island mic in my collection: old faithful if you will. It’s effectively a 416 with a figure-8 side capsule inside of it for a focused and self-contained MS setup. The side capsule is a pinch noisy, but otherwise, the 418S provided the most balanced standalone recording of each firearm at ~6ft from diagonally behind the firing line.
Countryman B3 - This is a high SPL lav, which was placed about 4ft over the left shoulder of the shooter, slightly behind the line. It did a remarkable job at isolating the punch of each weapon without picking up too much wind or other ambient noise.
AT2020 Mod - This is a microphone that I’ve modded extensively using this kit. It can’t be compared to a stock AT2020 as, well, none of the original parts remain inside the body of the mic, which is effectively a donor shell for a new capsule and PCB. That said, I didn’t love the results it provided, with a bottom end that tended to ‘blow out’ with higher SPL weapons. It did great on some of the suppressed content, though.
Line Audio CM3 XY - This is a stereo pair of condensers I borrowed from Matt Tracy. They helped to provide some nice stereo image, and you can even pick out the first reflections off the gun shed/garage to the left of the range. Unfortunately, my wind protection for them wasn’t particularly great, and in hindsight a blimp would’ve been great here over basic furries.
Shure SM57 - What’s a recording session without an SM57? This was the only mic in front of the firing line, and it did exactly what I needed it to. Picked up a nice transient click and not much else. While I shouldn’t be surprised that the dynamic mic of the bunch had some of the best SPL tolerance, it’s always a bit of a shock when the $100 microphone fares favorably in a number of the recordings.
Stickless Mini MS - The diagram here is actually a bit off, I was able to cobble together an extension that put the mic at around 50 ft behind the firing line. As the maker of the Mini MS, I’m well aware of its deficiencies on paper with high SPL content. Given that, it performed admirably and provided a nice distant layer that helped to balance things quite well. Like the CM3s, though, it was susceptible to other ambient noise and wind. It was also rather out-in-the-open in a field, so a blimp like the Rycote WS9 would’ve been appreciated.
Mic Perspective Comparisons - Audio
Here’s one shot from the Marlin Model 336c, a lever-action rifle, from each mic’s perspective! My website only lets me directly upload MP3s, so sorry for the poor upload quality.
TURN YOUR VOLUME DOWN, GUNS ARE LOUD.
Mic Perspective Comparisons - Video
Here’s a video comparison of each microphone for two of the guns at the session: the Ithaca Model 37 Shotgun and Ruger Mini-14 Rifle.
Other Gear
Sound Devices MixPre 3II and MixPre 6II - These six mic setups occupied 9 inputs on 2 recorders. Both recorders were set to 32bit/96khz. Now, this might prove to be a bit controversial but I am so glad that I opted for recording in 32bit. The flexibility to decide how hard I hit limiters for each mic/gun setup at the editing stage vastly outweighed the potential character I may have gained by sticking with 24bit and the MixPre’s built in limiters in the field. As always, lowering the clip gain of a 32bit file and seeing full resolution peaks has a black-magic quality to it. I could then dial in limiters to taste, rather than a setting I can’t modify after the fact.
Nikon D5100 DSLR - I barely put any thought/effort into the photo & video side of this recording session; I was rather preoccupied with the audio side of things and it showed. Didn’t really end up with anything useful here, but I’ll try to keep it in mind a bit more going forward.
Accessories - Velcro cable ties, cable labels, and painters/gaff tape are my best friends.
Reflections
No, not the kind where sound bounces off a surface. Though there was plenty of that in these recordings.
Shooting the metal targets is fun for getting affirmation for your own aiming mediocrity. They are, however, not as fun for editing the recordings afterwards. From the start of future sessions, I will be sure to inform all parties that shooting metal targets is a no-go.
Birds, airplanes, and bugs will do everything they can to get in your way as soon as you press record. Not much you can do about it.
Mic Placement - I should have used an extension cable to get the B3 closer to the shooter. It has a 150db max SPL, so I think it would’ve been perfectly fine to clip to the shooter’s hat or something similar. That said, I’m happy with the current results so can’t complain too much.
Editing & Organization - The time that I put into preparation paid off hugely in the editing stage. I’m also thankful to my fiancée’s father for being so dilligent about slating each weapon attentively. Filenaming and metadata entry processes were expedited significantly by using my UCS Renaming Tool and some of my other workflow optimization scripts for Reaper (not to toot my own horn, as they say).
Syncing Two MixPres - This bullet point ended up becoming… quite lengthy. If you’re interested in the process of setting up timecode syncing between two Sound Devices MixPres, then you’ll love the “Syncing Two MixPres” section at the very bottom of this post. Otherwise, feel free to skip it.
Above all else, I am quite happy with the results of the session and think that it was about as good as a first experience recording firearms could have gone. Is this the best gun library on the market? No. Did I expect to do that on my first outing? Also no! Everyone was safe, all of my gear and equipment cooperated in the field, and I had the opporunity to learn and improve as a recordist. Huge thank you, again, to my fiancée’s father and everyone that provided advice/equipment along the way. :)
Pew Pew
Yes, that’s right, you can download all of the recordings from the session using the button above! I have opted to make them free and available publicly. If you read this much of my blog post, then I applaud you for taking the time. Please check out the recordings, enjoy them, and let me know your thoughts! There are 189 files, nearly 2 dozen weapons, and about 2.5Gb of content.
While you can totally just go download the files for free and move on with life, I would certainly appreciate if you helped fuel my caffeine addiction. A few bucks here-and-there make the borderline unhealthy number of coffee beans I consume slightly more palatable for my finances. Thank you :)
***I would like to leave these recordings as a ‘Thank You’ gift for those that actually checked out this post. So please don’t just share the raw link to the recordings with others.
Syncing Two MixPres
For some reason, I wasn’t able to find any information on timecode syncing two separate Sound Devices MixPres, though there was plenty of information on timecode syncing to different camera setups or products like the Tentacle Sync. For those that may encounter the same predicament, there are a couple of ways to pull it off.
In the following steps, GENERATOR will refer to the MixPre that is actively generating timecode, where RECEIVER will refer to the MixPre that is receiving the prior MixPre’s timecode.
Syncing Two MixPres Method 1: Free-Running Timecode
Free-Running timecode runs continuously on both recorders without stopping due to the current record or playback state.
1. Set up the audio output jack for your GENERATOR MixPre to output timecode by going to the Outputs menu, second page, and setting St. Out Mode to LTC Out.
2. Set up the timecode mode on your GENERATOR MixPre to output Free-Running timecode by going to the Timecode menu, first page, and setting TC Mode to Free Run.
3. Plug an aux/3.5mm cable from the Stereo Output jack on the GENERATOR MixPre into the aux input of your RECEIVER MixPre.
4. Set up the timecode mode on your RECEIVER MixPre to receive Free-Running timecode by going to the Timecode menu, first page, and setting TC Mode to Aux In 1.
Syncing Two MixPres Method 2: Record-Run Timecode
Record-Run timecode will run only when actively recording. This means that, when importing and syncing your files in a DAW, there will be no gaps between them. This is largely up to user preference, though it is worth noting that when set to Record-Run timecode, the RECEIVER MixPre can start recording the instant that you press record on the GENERATOR MixPre!
1. Set up the audio output jack for your GENERATOR MixPre to output timecode by going to the Outputs menu, second page, and setting St. Out Mode to LTC Out.
2. Set up the timecode mode on your GENERATOR MixPre to output Record-Run timecode by going to the Timecode menu, first page, and setting TC Mode to Rec Run.
3. Plug an aux/3.5mm cable from the Stereo Output jack on the GENERATOR MixPre into the aux input of your RECEIVER MixPre.
4. Set up the timecode mode on your RECEIVER MixPre to receive Rec-Run timecode by going to the Timecode menu, first page, and setting TC Mode to Aux In 1.
5. Set up your RECEIVER MixPre to start recording automatically by going to the Record menu, second page, and setting Rec Trigger to Timecode.
Syncing Two MixPres: Editing in Reaper
If you are importing your files into a Reaper session, these two actions are super helpful; particularly if you are using Free-Running Timecode.
Item: Move to media source preferred position (BWF start offset)
This will align all of your items in your session to the Start Offset timecode in the items
Item properties: Display item source time ruler in H:M:S:F format, apply media source BWF start offset
This will display a handy ruler for double checking and gauging the relative position of each item in your session