Best Gunshots

Actually, the best reproduced "gun shots" I've heard were in the movie "True Lies". This was the DTS version at a public theater. Very dynamic and lifelike, as were the two Harrier jets when they first appear on the screen, flying in formation. The gun fire in the snow chase scene at the beginning of the movie, with the snowmiolbiles, was very high above dialog level, somewhat higher than the gunfire in The Matrix IMO. The loudest gunfire in the Matrix, is the gatlin cannon that shoots the glass out of the skyscraper's window.

The "Heat" shootout was one of the best shootouts, I agree, from a film-making point of view. I even felt sick to my stomach, because some part of my mind was so lost in the show, that I thought I was really there, being shot at! (I was using HD-600 headhpones, and the rear channel information was presented both correctly, and realistically, OUTSIDE MY HEAD...AND DOWN THE BLOCK IN EVERY DIRECTION!!) HOWEVER, my feeling of where the sonic realism of this scene comes from is: the spatial information as I describe above (both from the echo off buildings in the street, and the variety of multiple origins of "direct sound" from the multiple guns being fired...in a sporatically realistic sequence in time. The sound designers were truly heroic in this effort!!)..................But, as for the sound having a dynamic pressure gradient, and contrast between loud and soft, similar to that of REAL gunfire, I stick by my experience with the DTS version of "True Lies" in a public theater over 6 years ago. I know the sound from the DVD's DD 5.1 version is nothing like the DTS version, also. I mean, back then, I couldn't believe the sound wasn't coming from a larger array of front speakers in that theater, than the already efficient group of 3 ElectroVoice, whose hi-frequency horn drivers can reach well beyond 130 dB, from EACH of the 3 front channels. Of course, there is significant harmonic and IM distortion with compression drivers at high playback, but with those shots from handguns in the beginning of the movie, the transients were so quick that I doubt it even had time to heat the voice coils of the compression drivers...even though I'm sure they were getting around 100% of their power handling capability (which is 150 watts RMS, on a horn with resluting sensitivity of around 112 dB/w/m)....during those fractions of a second that each gun was fired, in the snow chase scene.