A collaborative post by BOOM BOX POST
Last summer, I took a trip to Sunriver in Central Oregon for vacation. I had no real plans to conduct any recording sessions, but I brought my kit—just in case an opportunity arose. A couple of days later, I somehow found myself at a rock quarry in the middle of nowhere with family friends who enjoyed hunting and shooting their firearms. So, of course, I brought out my field recording gear—and I’m excited to share some basic processing techniques for the recordings I captured.
You’d be surprised just how “quiet” raw gunshot recordings can sound without any processing. I say quiet but really I mean to say they’re perceived as quiet since they’re incredibly dynamic. I remember being shocked by how low I had to set the gain on my recorder to avoid clipping. Take a look at the before and after waveforms below to see the difference in dynamics.
When played back dry, the recordings sounded like the weakest little pops. The transients lacked detail and punch. But with some basic processing, we can turn those thin pops into powerful, rich, cinema-ready gunshot sound effects.
My basic processing chain: Compression → EQ → Distortion and Saturation → Limiting. I’ll be using just a couple of stock Pro Tools plugins for this demo, but I highly encourage you to experiment with whatever sound design tools you have at your disposal.
Compression
Controlling the dynamics of these recordings is essential to producing the desired results. There are a number of ways to do this, but for the most control, I reach for a compressor. Below, you’ll see the settings I used. These aren’t perfect nor one-size-fits-all settings—the ratio, knee, and release should all be adjusted to taste. But it is imperative that you use a fast attack to grab the transients.
As you can see on the “GR” (gain reduction) meter in the “levels” section, the compressor is reducing the signal by around 18–20 dB. I’m then making the gain back up manually using the red Gain knob (the bottom right). 20 dB is a TON of compression, but for this application even 20 dB is a bit conservative.
EQ
I adjusted the EQ slightly for each firearm, but my main goal was to boost the lows and highs to bring out the body and sizzle of each gunshot. You can be as aggressive as you like here, depending on the character you're going for. I’m using the EQ after compression in this case. Since the shots are transient and dynamic, it’s tough to address equalization issues until the signal has been compressed. Feel free to play with EQ before the compression to see how results may change.
Saturation & Distortion
This is where the real magic happens. Adding harmonic content gives the recordings the crunch, edge, and warmth you'd expect from a cinematic gunshot sound effect. I used Avid’s Lo-Fi plugin to achieve this, but feel free to experiment with third-party tools like FabFilter Saturn 2, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, or Soundtoys Decapitator for even more powerful results. As you can see, even with very subtle settings we can add so much more character and aggression to the gunshots.
Final Touches: Pitch & Limiting
For the final polish, I used Pitch Shift Legacy (check out our pitch plugin shootout!) to pitch the recordings down by 1.5 semitones. This added a little extra heft while preserving the original character. Then I followed up with a limiter to tame any remaining peaks and maximize impact.
Listen to the before-and-after files below!
Of course, you can take this processing much further—but even these few basic steps will get you most of the way there. If I had access to an unlimited plugin arsenal, I’d probably reach for subharmonic processors, transient shapers, multiband compressors, and multiband gates before diving into more experimental tools. My goal for this demo was simply to bring out the best in these recordings and prepare them for realistic use in film or games. Hopefully, this inspires you to get out there and record your own source material for post-processing!
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