Thinking back on it, the only difference I ever noted was when the thing whizzes pass your head, especially after a ricochet. Bigger the bullet, bigger the whizz wherr sound (and no, it is not combat experience, It is living amongst really bad deer hunters
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cheers
w
I have never experienced a "whizz".
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I have never been shot at but we did, however, had to do "butt party" in the old days before our rifle ranges became fully automated.
We stood inside a channel below ground level at the butt of the range and lifted up targets for 4 seconds exposures before lowering them. After that we also tally the number of holes before taping them up for the next sequence.
When 5.56 passes overhead, the sound we heard was a loud "PIAK" - like the sharp crack of a thin whip.
At 300m down-range, we hear the crack a few milli-seconds before we hear the "boom" of the firing because the speed of sound is slower than the supersonic bullet.
So a detail of 12 people firing from 300m away would sound like many whips cracking, quickly followed by the "booms"
When I was a kid I read comics where some writers put the word "crack" to add a dimension of sound to gunfight scenes. Back then I was wondering why cos in the movies the guns went "boom", not "crack".
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Most war movies never reproduce this sound when recreating a scene of being under fire. Maybe it is because most movie makers don't know that a supersonic bullet makes this sound when passing overhead. Or maybe they know, but the general audience doesn't, and would find this sound confusing or unbelievable.
