My audio gunshot detector keeps confusing bullet crack with muzzle report, driving my overlay crazy

[Cole Howard]

Hey guys, I’ve been building a spectator overlay for local CS tournaments that uses a mic array on the stage to detect shot direction and show a little cone pointing at the shooter. The idea is solid but my localization is a total mess in practice. The system works fine for the muzzle ‘bang’ when someone fires close by, but the second a shooter is further away or using an AK (supersonic round), the overlay starts snapping the cue to completely wrong angles, sometimes even behind the player. I’m running a 6-mic setup with a TDOA pipeline and throwing a Kalman filter on top to smooth it out, but the error rate is brutal.

What I’m starting to suspect is that the algorithm can’t tell the difference between the muzzle report and that high-pitched transonic ‘crack’ the bullet makes as it flies past. At long range the crack actually arrives before the muzzle blast, and I think my classifier is latching onto the wrong transient and inverting the direction. Anyone here have experience with acoustic gunshot localization or TDOA beamforming? How do you reliably separate the two signatures and lock onto the right one under arena noise? Any pointers on the processing chain would be a lifesaver.

"Stay calm, click heads."

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