Stadium Horns vs. Paging Horns on Pro Acoustics Tech Talk Episode 16
On this week’s episode of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk, Nathan and Coltin are discussing stadium horns and paging horns - how they work, how they differ, and what they can be used for.
Everybody welcome to another edition of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk. I'm Nathan, I'm Coltin. And we're here today to talk to you guys all about horns. What are horns, Coltin, what are they for? What good can they be for you? And explain some of the different types of, some of our favorite models and what horns can do for you.
All right Nathan. So, we have some Atlas horns in front of me here. So yeah, dive into the mysterious world of horns and the different styles. Obviously, I have like a box style speaker here. I have a massive guy in the middle and then just, you know, our regular paging horn. So, kind of walk me through this. What's the main differences between them?
Yeah, you got it. So, at Pro Acoustics, we sell a lot of different products. You just happen to have Atlas stuff laying here on the table. I used to say we sell from Atlas to Yamaha, but I think that leaves out some other manufacturers. So we got a lot of other people in between there whose products we have available. Yeah. These are readily available from us. We love Atlas products. They are built tough, and they do a good job of showing what I want to show you guys here today. Absolutely. So like Coltin mentioned, we do have a speaker on the far left that's a conventional, just a conventional speaker built-in 70-volt transformer. For more on 70-volt check back on our previous video from some months back. Yeah. But, the SM82T over there, we have that one in white, that's kind of a conventional speaker in the sense of its conventional woofer and tweeter.
You know, you've got an eight-inch woofer and a high-frequency driver beside it, all inside of one cabinet. So, it's going to be good for music, but at the end of the day, there's certain limitations of how far a conventional speaker's going to be able to throw. Right. So sometimes we need to be able to send sound very far away. You hit on some of our popular applications, ball fields. I've done a lot of aquariums, rodeo arenas here in Texas are very popular also. You know, we still do a lot of paging and emergency stuff for factories, warehouses, manufacturing plants, things like that. So sometimes we have to have a combination of what type of speaker do you need for your application. Yeah. So, what that comes down to is do you just want music and how far is it going to throw, or do we prefer more of like the vocal range?
So, when we say the vocal range of frequencies, people say, what does that mean? Yeah. Basically, a paging horn as we've all encountered them before sounds like a megaphone, a bullhorn. Yeah. It focuses in on our voice. So that it can project the human voice very long distances or tones thereabout. Gotcha. So basically, you know, this is a paging horn, I want to say, under $150 or so. Yeah. But it can do upwards of 120 decibels plus in the vocal range. That's extraordinarily loud. This horn here can throw hundreds of feet. And while the SM82 might be able to throw those, those same kinds of distances, it's not going to be as loud. So by focusing in on those vocal frequencies, horns can throw sound very long ways. Absolutely. But then that leads us to the dilemma. What do we do for ball fields? Because Coltin and I grew up playing ball with this kind of horn. Yup. You don't want to be listening to Inner Sandman or Welcome to the Jungle when you're walking up to the plate and hear it coming out of a bullhorn or megaphone. Most of the time, audiences these days want to hear something that sounds better. Crisper, clear, fuller range.
The bass. Yeah. All about that bass.
So, enter our friend, the Atlas FS12T. Yeah. This is representative of the class of stadium speakers that are many times coaxial, meaning there's actually a woofer and a tweeter, kind of a one in front of the other. And also is horn-loaded. What does horn-loaded mean? I don't know. Horn-loaded means we're taking a full range, you know, musical speaker, like we have an SM82, but projecting it through a horn. Okay. So, lots of times I explain that to people. It's kind of like if I'm standing here talking, you might hear me, but if I cup my hands over my mouth, you might hear me even further away. Yeah. So that same basic concept is integrated into stadium speakers to where we can throw music further distances. So this Atlas speaker here is rated I think at peaks of like 130 decibels, and that's while covering the bulk of the musical spectrum. So, highs sound like highs, lows sound like lows. We love this guy. We had a great, great time with it out here in the field.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And to touch on, just to put in perspective, OSHA, they require hearing protection. I don't know if I said that right, but they require hearing protection at 85 decibels. So yeah. Long-term exposure to volumes exceeding 85 decibels is where OSHA requires you to start wearing hearing protection.
Yeah. So that means that if one of these horns is able to do, you know, a hundred decibels at about a hundred feet or so, it's pretty loud, you know, it's still booking it. You're still, you're still rocking and rolling and that gives you plenty of volume to get over your crowds or your ambient noise or that kind of thing. Absolutely. So, all that to say we've got, you know, the Atlas FS12 horn. We've got the APX40TN horn, we've got like the GA15 and GA30T horn, which are some other options. But the main idea here is when you're looking at horns, we need to figure out, do you want more musical reproduction? Do you want more vocal intelligibility or both? Also, keep in mind when you get the best of both worlds, the price point does go up a bit.
Yup. This one is from Atlas. Like I mentioned, we also have stadium horns from other manufacturers like Community Loudspeakers, love those guys. JBL, check out some of our other videos for some of their offerings. I did a little, schpeel over at the Community booth at InfoComm. Gotcha. And this is a 12-inch woofer. We also have stadium horns starting in six and a half-inch woofers, eight-inch woofers, 10-inch woofers, dual 12-inch woofers, 15-inch woofers on up, as well as stadium subwoofers.
So, if you have applications where you need to know what horn is right for me, and also pair him with amplifiers, figure out if you need a 70 volt or an eight-ohm amplifier to go with it, reach out to us www.proacousticsusa.com (888) 256-4112. I'm at nathan@proacoustics.com and I'm coltin@proacoustics.com. That was Coltin with an i. And again, just to reiterate, you know, share this around. We want to get more involvement with these videos, so if there's any questions that you know is on your mind still after watching this video, please feel free to drop them, you know, down below. And get involved. Like I said, we, you know, we're, we're trying to touch upon as much as we can and give you all the info that you need here. But you know, we can't possibly cover every single thing, so definitely get involved. You know, let us hear your voices down below, and share this around. But I believe that's all for today. That's a wrap. So, again, reach out to us. We're here to help you guys and until next time, I'm Coltin, I'm Nathan. See you later.