Machine Gun Sounds.

[Zooropa_Fly]

Just curious if anyone has an opinion on this ?

 

To me the sound is perhaps too complicated.

Too distored and soft sounding. A bit phut-phut.

Could sound more masculine, mysogynistically speaking.

 

S!

[Oorpii]

Won't argue with that..............

[Todt_Von_Oben]

When you fire an M-60 from the bipod, tripod, or assault position; it's loud.  You're right there on top of it; sound is bouncing off the ground back to your ears; it all adds up to harmful noise levels reaching your eardrums if you don't wear earplugs.

 

But then again I've heard WWI vets say that (in the airborne environment, with all that's going on, there's a lot of factors that could keep sound waves from the muzzle blast from reaching the ears of the pilot) the sound of guns is a lot quieter than you'd expect.   But even so, you're not far behind the receiver group and it's bolted to the airframe; you'd still hear (and maybe to some extent feel) the mechanical sounds and vibrations of the weapon cycling.

 

I thought about it when I first heard the Spandau in FC and it seemed to me that's what the Devs were going for.  I think it's okay.

[Todt_Von_Oben]

Also, consider the nature of sound in the atmosphere and the shape of the Spandau 08 muzzle.  

 

An M-60 has a flash hider with slots that let the gasses expand laterally instead of straight out the barrel.  And with those gasses go the sound waves.  And when you are right there next to it, standing up or laying down; those waves are in the air and bouncing off the ground so it's loud.  

 

But the megaphone-shaped Spandau muzzle brake has no slots; it projects the blast (and sound) forward into the arc of the propeller.

 

Generally speaking in lay terms: "noise" is sound waves vibrating air molecules that convey those vibes to our ear drums.  But a principle of acoustics is, if you can break up the orderly expansion and spread of those sound waves, you can "deaden" the sound.  

 

In this case, it's the basic idea of  "a voice lost in the storm."

 

The hot gasses carrying the sound of the exploding cartridge powder do not encounter a stable air mass through which they can spread uniformly; they encounter the prop-blast and relative wind: air masses in chaotic motion through which an orderly sound wave going in the opposite direction has no chance of expanding far enough to be heard by the pilot seated about five feet aft of the muzzles; in the cockpit, behind the windscreen, in a leather flying cap but otherwise out in the relative wind which is noisy in itself.

 

So, over the roar of the engine, the gunfire is muffled by the prop blast and relative wind.  What the pilot can hear is the mechanism cycling a foot or so in front of his face.  That will be a quick concatenation of metallic noises; pretty much what we have now.

 

So again, I'm okay with the way they sound.  

 

 

Edited November 9, 2019 by Todt_Von_Oben