Hello.
Right... sounds on my boards.
The problem here is that the M41A doesn't sound like an M41A. I spent some time analysing the films, and there is only one gun sound shared between the M41A and the M56. Close inspection of the audio track reveals that the sound for the M41A is running at 20 rounds per second, not the 15 rounds per second that the M41A is actually firing at. The sound team basically took the one firing sound, from the MG42 and compressed / phased / reverbed / etc the sound to create the sound you know and love so well.
My sound boards make a single shot sound when a single round is fired to ensure a proper matching up of sounds to counter. That means you're not restricted to the same length bursts you have in the films (you notice they always fire the same length bursts? It's the same base sound with different effects added), but can fire just one shot, or hold the trigger down to empty your magazine in one firing frenzy. The board overlays the sounds to merge them into a stream of shots.
Because of that I couldn't use the original film sounds since at no point is there a single shot fired. Also it proved pretty much impossible to separate out a single clean shot from the end of a burst since they were just all to noisy with too much other activity going on, and the previous shots in the burst were messing them up anyway.
So I had to synthesize my own. I took a single shot from an MG42 and added lots of brown and white noise to it and filtered it to make it sound closer to what I perceive a single shot from the M41A would sound like (with no real frame of reference it was purely subjective) and programmed the board to "bend" the sounds by changing the playback frequency during a burst. That helped to achieve some of the phase effect that is heard during a burst.
It's not 100% accurate, but it sounded close enough to me at the time.
Of course, the sounds aren't set in stone. The board is completely programmable and everything about it can be changed - including the sounds. If someone can come up with a better single shot sound that when merged into a burst and "bent" sounds closer to the real M41A I'd be overjoyed to include it in the board.
The main problem I had with getting the sound to sound close of course, though, is the difference in the firing rate. It sounded closer when the M41A was set to fire at 20 RPS, since the sounds merged more. But at the 15 RPS that the M41A really fires at, the sounds just will never merge in the same way, since you are used to hearing them at 20 RPS.
So actually, my board is "right", and the films are "wrong"
As for the V3... I was originally envisaging having it as a 2-part board with the display separate from the controller. People seem to like the all-in-one approach better though, so I am thinking I will be overhauling the V2A to make the V3 with better sound and board layout. The sound on the 2A is it's weakest point. It's not as loud as I'd have liked. It is possible to add an external amplifier to boost the sound, but not all have the room for that. A better audio system is a must for the V3. I already have an experimental setup which has much clearer, higher quality (CD quality stereo!) audio - it's just the power amp stage that's tricky. It has to be really really small, and run off a low voltage, and yet still be loud enough to shatter a Xenomorph's ear drums (do they have ear drums?) at 20 paces.
The "micro" boards have sold well, and the first test batch I made have all sold out already. The micro has no sound, just a counter, but it really is small. I need to make up another batch of those...