What a bullet sounds like

The goal of this video was to capture what a bullet flying through the air sounds like. Since the camera is sandwiched between two mountains, the echo was pretty bad from the gunshot. So we used 3 subsonic silenced .40 caliber shots as well as 3 supersonic 7.62x39 shots. The guns were 110 yards away from the camera, the camera was behind a 10 ft. tall berm inside of a cardboard box. The cardboard box helped to keep some of the echoed sound away from the microphone.

Very cool, in my opinion. This actually captures the sound of the .40 fairly well, but the 7.62x39 sound quality was polluted quite a bit by the echo from the mountains.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• bullet
• sounds
• sound
• HK
• USP
• silenced
• suppressor
• silencer
• pistol
• AK47
• 7.62x39

[thewaterfalloflove]

Question: Once I was walking our land while my cousins were target shooting a couple hundred yards away through thick woods. We were all basically kids and they were unknowingly shooting toward me. Nobody would think a bullet could pass through so many trees, but apparently one did.

Well the question is this. If you hear a bullet wiz by sounding a bit like a spinning top, how close is that bullet to your head?

[MaverickH1]

@thewaterfalloflove I would hazard a guess that hearing the bullet only means that the sound of the explosion didn't interfere with it. The volume of the sound of the bullet would be the only indicator for how close it was to you. And I have no way to know that.

[LindyHopRules]

Maverick: was the .40 ammo subsonic?

[MaverickH1]

Yes, it was. Practically all standard .40 loads are subsonic out of a pistol. Which is actually one of the reasons I chose this caliber for a suppressor host.

[spraynpray]

Do you have a silenced .22LR? You can get it to be almost no report at all, and just crack. And you can get accurate enough to shoot right by your camera.

[MaverickH1]

Nope, only a .40 for now. Someday I hope to do something like this better, with better sound equipment, in a wide open field, with a bigger variety of calibers.  But until then, I'll just dream on.

[zhmapper]

My friend, I think your logic is flawed. The sonic boom travels at the speed of sound, meaning it's impossible for you to hear anything the bullet makes before the crack itself.

You hear the whiz first with the pistol rounds because they've gone subsonic before they pass the camera.

[metroid51733]

it was winston churchill

[MakTre87]

I love the sound of the AK & the .40..

SAIGA 7.62 and XD40 FTW

[icdbko32]

sounded good enough for my for the ballistic crack

[dylanjb100]

I left my speakers up coz im a bad ass like that :)

[afgrocks123]

1:35 for the BOOM!

[CainG88]

@thewaterfalloflove If it penetrated that many trees the chances of it being supersonic are low, plus you probably heard the zip of its ricochet. Ricochets are much louder than straight travelling bullets because they have a much larger surface area that is rubbing against the air (which is why bullets whistle), so I doubt it was that close. It it was going supersonic, bullets that are close to you would have been very very loud, probably enough to make your ears ring for a few mintues.

[HirachieOfSociety]

Hey maverick is it true that super sonic depending on the range you will here a "snap" and when it hits it's a "thud" A friend told me that this is one way to judge how far away your shooter is.

[raceman191]

@zhmapper I believe that YOUR logic is actually flawed. If the whiz happens directly overhead, and the crack happens slightly after, you'll hear the whiz then the crack. The sonic crack travels at the speed of sound, obviously, but by your logic, the whiz, another sound, travels slower. Not true, you'll hear one, then the other, regardless of if there is a sonic crack or not.

[TheVikingChris]

@thewaterfalloflove Seriously? Did that happen? You're lucky those bullets didn't hit you. Kids should be supervised if handling guns, bb-guns or airsoftguns.