Changing weapon sounds in FiveM

#Where the sound comes from

<Item type="CWeaponInfo">
  <Name>WEAPON_MYPISTOL</Name>
  <Model>w_pi_mypistol</Model>
  <Audio>AUDIO_ITEM_PISTOL</Audio>
  ...
</Item>

The Audio item bundles the shot, the tail (echo), reload and handling sounds. An add-on weapon copied from the pistol sounds like the pistol until you change this line. The rest of the file is explained in weapons.meta explained.

#The easy way: borrow another weapon’s sound

Open the vanilla weapons.meta (in CodeWalker or OpenIV) and copy the Audio value of the weapon whose sound you want — a heavier pistol, a rifle, a suppressed-style SMG. Put it into your add-on weapon’s entry and restart the resource. No audio files are streamed, so it costs nothing.

#The hard way: custom audio

A truly new gunshot needs the same pieces the game uses: wave packs (.awc) holding the audio, plus audio data (.rel files) that define the sounds and the weapon audio item referencing them. Recent CodeWalker builds can convert .awc and .rel files to and from XML, which is how most custom packs are made.

fx_version 'cerulean'
game 'gta5'

files {
    'audio/mypistol_game.dat151.rel',
    'audio/mypistol_sounds.dat54.rel',
    'audio/wavepack/dlc_mypistol/*.awc',
}

data_file 'AUDIO_GAMEDATA' 'audio/mypistol_game.dat'
data_file 'AUDIO_SOUNDDATA' 'audio/mypistol_sounds.dat'
data_file 'AUDIO_WAVEPACK' 'audio/wavepack/dlc_mypistol'

Note the data_file paths omit the 151.rel/54.rel suffix — the game adds it. Then set the weapon’s <Audio> to the audio item defined in your game data.

#Client-side sound packs and sv_pure

Many players install gunshot sound mods in their own GTA files. With sv_pureLevel 1 the server blocks modified client files except audio and known graphics mods, so those packs still work; sv_pureLevel 2 blocks all modified files, including audio. Server-streamed sounds work on every level. Before adding your own, it is worth checking what the game already answers to — the sound list carries 2,202 names.