Boeing has decided that laser weapons shouldn’t be silent:
This isn’t actually a new idea. As I pointed out in my book, Robert Sheckley saw the problems with silent beam weapons back in the 1950s. his short story The Gun Without a Bang (originally in Galaxy for June 1958, reprinted in Store of Infinity and lots of other places) shows what happens when there’s no dramatic sound effect to accompany the destruction. More recently, the Rifts RPGs from Palladium Books have laser guns manufactured by Wilk Laser Technology (A company name I find endearing – I bought one of their T-shirts) that can be customized to have sound effects to provide that visceral “oomph”.
Looks like the Real World has finally caught up with pulp SF and Gamers.
Philip Francis Nowlan’s 1928-9 magazine serials about Anthony (later “Buck” ) Rogers was the source of the sound “Zap!” used by ray guns. Later, in the Buck Rogers comic strips, the hand held ray guns (which this strip introduced) made the “Zap!” sound, as did real-life vtoys based on them. We owe our “Zap” to Nowlan and Buck.
The coolest laser sound is near the end of Serenity, after they’ve got through the Reaver fleet except for that one last ship which cripples them before “gliding it in”. It has a nasty “cutting” edge to the sound along with the buzzing.