Taking the horn by the bull!

[timothy st.john]

Hello everyone,

Has anyone experimented with aftermarket trumpet-type horns, electronic or air driven? Someone tried to occupy my lane yesterday, and simply wouldn't or couldn't obey the authority of my beep-beep OEM horn. Interestingly, the same selfish driver tried to do it again to someone else, only seconds later in a continued effort to move right, but was stopped by a quick blast from a conventional car horn; ironically, it was a new Volkswagon beetle.

There are several electronic trumpet style horns that issue significantly louder warnings. Despite what the independent reviewers claim, the numbers they record on their dB meters register significant improvement.While none of them seem to deliver the promise their manufacturers claim for them, in terms of electronic registration on a meter, they are almost always twice as loud, and invariably more authoritative in pitch.

Part of the problem is that the reviewers don't understand acoustics, and so they often place their meter too close to the source. The other thing is that they fail to believe their ears, which tell a different story to the meter. Failing to recognize that other motorists are using ears, and not dB meters to register the physical and psychological effect of these horns is the greater sin.

As far as dB's are concerned, know that and increase of 10 dB is perceived as a doubling in volume, while a single dB is a simply a unit of measurement that denotes the smallest incremental change in the perceived volume of a sound source. That is to say, if you very slowly turn up the volume on a device until a listener finally declares that they can tell that the sound level has increased, it is said to have gone up 1 dB.

So, a horn that is 10 dB louder is perceived as being twice as loud. That's significant! However, it is the manipulation of the tenor (the quality of the sound) and its tessitura (pitch) that register or declares itself more or less aggressively on our conscious and unconscious accounting of a situation. The beep-beep style OEM horns are actually quite loud, they just have no authority in the constellation of our concerns.

There are electric horns that are direct replacements for the OEM ones, that give you bike the aural authority of a car, without need of any extra consideration. Simply plug them in and go. Hella, Wolo, PIAA, and others make small inexpensive non-compressor/air horns types that seem a much better option when it comes to barking in advance of the bite of collision. What is your experience, and what if anything have you undertaken to do about it.

Timothy St. John

 

[Kevin.NZ]

Several years ago I fitted twin air horns on my Breva, I kept all the wiring original and used the horn push to operate a relay I installed under the tank to operate the compressor that I tucked under the seat. I did post photos a few weeks ago. Some members have opted for horns that don't require a compressor and are very happy with them and I must say look very smart, anyway I am very happy with mine.
Kevin

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[andyb]

If you have time to hit the horn button you have time to brake, accelerate or change your direction.......best to get out of the way if you can and not assume that the driver of the other vehicle will clear you .......they have already proven that they are blind so they may also be deaf.
AndyB

 

[sib]

There's a certain style of driving that is used by some people who are either partially blind (poor peripheral vision), have a stiff neck, have improperly aimed side view mirrors, or perhaps a combination of these conditions. When they want to change lanes, they do it slowly, blindly, thinking that if someone is in the way they'll honk. I see this happen often in my state, which has an abundance of older drivers. When I'm on my bike in multi-lane traffic, I try to keep aware of this and always have an escape route in mind. I do think that louder horns would help in this situation.

 

[john zibell]

About as loud as they come. http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&ke...qmt=b&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_21j2ifce36_b using the bike's wiring with a relay is the way to go as this horn draws significant amps.

 

[abbienormal]

In db ratings an increase in 3db is roughly double the volume. It is on a logrithmic scale and a 10db increase is 10 times as loud.
On my 1400 I purchsed a pair of low and high tone Stebels direct from Stebel which was the lowest cost I found. I installed them in place of the standard scooter horns and no problems but a lot louder. My install is here.
https://www.guzzitech.com/forums/threads/horn-a-little-weak.14416/#post-103685

 

[jennygirl]

About as loud as they come. http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&ke...qmt=b&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_21j2ifce36_b using the bike's wiring with a relay is the way to go as this horn draws significant amps.

Definitely a good idea. The tiny horn on my older Toyota truck draws so many amps through a tiny wire that it drops voltage enough to reset the arduinos monitoring fuel consumption. No relay on that one! And kinda scary. I should fix that....

I always thought SPL was calculated like:
+3dB = double sound power (etc doubling amplifier output)
+6dB = double measured volume (rms voltage)
+10dB = double perceived loudness (sensed by ears)

I have done a lot of loudspeaker design so I tend to stick with +3dB as doubling sound output, too, fwiw.

 

[Tonerjockey]

I live in an area of high volume, high density traffic. A large portion of drivers are new immigrant drivers, unfamiliar with local laws. We have old folks (yeah that's ME), hot rodders, very busy business folks, completely distracted PDA users (Personal Digital Assistant ... see I told ya I was old), drunks, stoners... plus I live very near a state college where it is "19 years old FOEREVER."
We also have every type of driver I havn't listed...
I am run completely out of my lane at least once a month. Both on the highway and city street. Tail gaters too.... whooeeee .
So I put a set of Hella's on the daily driver and that helped a lot. Now they hear me. But...
The daily driver is a black and white LAPD G5. I wanted to slip a little more "attention" into the horn system so I picked up a "WigWag." A device that switches current between 2 consumers. In police vehicles they are often used to alternate the high beams...
In my case the device was an older style it's configuration didn't control the horns the way I wanted.
I like the unit John references above and will try that.
The upshot here IMHO is, staying in one piece while riding a motorcycle in a populated area requires certain "skills." Andy put it well but I have found that always knowing where your "escape path" is, constant monitoring of all the traffic around ya, AND loud horns help. Make sure they know yer there, stay OUT of their blind spot. Use the turn signals... plus hand signals. AND get a loud horn and use it.
So far so good... only hit once... from behind at a light...

Anyone try a train horn? Also I am interested in an Italian police (caribinari?) horn system...

Alex

 

[timothy st.john]

Hi All, and thank-you for posting.

I was trying to avoid the technical distraction in my original posting, but as we have gone there, you are correct Jenny. Wow! Motorcycles and audio enthusiast. Doubling amplifier power yields only an increase of 3dB in volume. Actually doubling the 'percieved' volume requires 10 times the power; which is why efficient speakers are the cheaper way to achieve volume (though not so too quality).

For those of you who aren't Jenny, but are following this nonetheless, lets imagine that a 100 watt amplifier can produce 100dB in a given circuit. Now, lets say that we want it to play twice as loud. Disreputable consumer electronics sales people have always liked to claim that twice the power equals twice the volume in order to up-sell amplifiers, but its a lie.

Doubling the power only returns a 3dB increase in volume (which is sufficient additional headroom to improve 'quality' at a given volume but not the quantity). So, lets do the math: if the 100 watt amplifier in our example yields 100 dB, then a 200 watt version of the amplifier will yield 103 dB, which is a long way away from the 110 dB you need to create the perception of double the volume.

Doubling it again to 400 watts yields only 106 dB, and doubling it again to 800 watts yields only 109dB; still short of 110 dB necessary for it to sound twice as loud. Doubling it again to 1600 watts yields 112 dB, which is more than your require. It turns out that 1000 watts are required to get you to the goal of 110 dB. This is a logarithmic function, whereas the statement 10 dB = 10 times as loud is not.

None of which is relevant though. If twice as loud (10dB increase) is not loud enough, nothing is. Psycho acoustically, as long as the timbre and pitch of the horn distracts our deliberate focus and attention from the things car drivers chose to focus on, like radio, conversation, etc. it should register better affect and therefore too effect.

That being the case, I think I'm going to look for the most obnoxiously authoritative sound I can find (that which suggests risk in action to the 'other' driver) rather than the loudest. Any recommendations?

Timothy St. John

 

[tibor]

Can anyone recommend some good loud horns for my V7-S?

 

[GTM®]

Can anyone recommend some good loud horns for my V7-S?

I merged your post with the current horn thread... start at the top of this post.

 

[timothy st.john]

Hi Tibor,

If you follow the thread, and my thinking, its not so much the volume of the horn that matters, although loud is better, so much as the horns psycho-acoustical ability to cut through the reverie of the absent driver who is challenging our preexisting condition within the lane that they covet.

On a primal level, low, along with loud, is associated with large and therefore threatening. But, the pitch of a horn is determined by the mass of the diaphragm or reed that must be caused to vibrate to create the sound. Large diaphragms and stiff reeds require powerful motivators to set them in action, all of which require space, size power, and weight; hence our primal association.

Most beep-beep horns are relatively high in pitch, and work on the principle of setting two closely intoned pitches against each other which cause what musicians call a dissonance, which is irritating; rather than a consonance, which is pleasantly harmonic. Therefore they intend to draw attention to themselves via this process of disturbance of pleasantness.

However, manufacturers seem to forget this methodology when they instead make horns louder, and in apology of the extra volume, they choose to make them more harmonious. The irritating VW beep (which worked originally) was an example of the former, while the regal trumpeting of the Cadillac town-car marks the second.

Those more musical horns were in fact tuned to be just that, more musical, albeit louder. Unfortunatley, we are evermore deaf to effect, so it seems that it is now time for a horn that is both loud and irritating. But until that day, I think I'm going to pursue the trumpet of the snail style car horn like the link below; which is trumpeting and loud while being dissonantly irritating.

The 'bull' I refer to in the title is the dB claims made by the horn manufacturers. As you'll see in second party reviews of most of the tested products, when measured, they don't come close to volume which is claimed for them.

Instead, their psycho acoustic is calculated based on the non linearity of the ear. Therefore, the first horn posted below is claimed to be louder, because it is actually perceived by our ear as being louder, because it is a higher in pitch.

Our ear hears it as louder because our ear is less sensitive to high and low pitches than it is to sounds in the crucial midrange. A trombone is louder than a trumpet, measured on a dB meter, but the trumpet actually 'sounds' louder to the human ear.

I don't know about you, but I have 'ears' on either side of my head, not dB meters. Having said that, the lower sound of the second posting has more...authority. [See Fletcher Munson diagram for the psycho acoustic evidence.]

http://wolo-mfg.com/horns/electric-replacement-horns/model-200-twin-power.html

http://wolo-mfg.com/horns/motorcycle-horns/model-320-2t-maxi-sound.html

Timothy St. John

 

[rbm]

Compare the Stebel Nautilus clone that same company sells (they call it the Bad Boy) to the Maxisound. I perceive the Stebel has more authority, both because of the maximum volume of the horn as well as the psycho-acoustic properties of the annunciator.

Comparing sound bites is fraught with problems because we, the listeners, don't know what the distance was between the horn and the microphone. Sound varies non-linearly with distance from the source as well. So, a recording made minutely closer to the source may be louder (higher SPL).

 

[timothy st.john]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the recommendation. The horns you suggest are both air horns, which require compressors (built in in these cases); the two I've posted are electric, and don't even require a relay. The air horns are louder, but have a significant delay (10th's of seconds matter in an accident) in some cases, and in some cases, the compressor whir, is almost as loud as the horn.

Most of these manufacturers 'do' state the distance to the microphone, but not either the microphone or the horns position in free-space; which is far more important, because boundary effect (that which reinforces certain frequencies as a function of proximity in non condenser style microphones) is very much at play at the frequencies that these things are typically tuned to.

These things should be measured outside where we play, but no one suggests whether or not they are. Its why music typically sounds so poor outside. Remember that 70% of the sound that reaches our ear is reflected. Dr. Amar Bose built a consumer electronics dynasty on this principle.

As for sensitivity to distance to the source, its largely irrelevant at these frequencies 400-600 Hz. As long as the distance is great enough to allow for the propagation of the a single wave length (and it is), no reasonable change in volume will be perceived over the kind of distances a horn must carry when an accident is looming (which is why there are regulations covering the allowable frequencies relative to stopping distances).

Thats why the bass from a high powered car stereo reaches lower and sounds louder on the side walk to pedestrians than it does to the occupants of the car; there isn't enough room in the car for the low pitched notes to even exist inside the car because it can't propagate one cycle before it reaches you ear (because the speaker is too close to you).

I might try some horns that have a separate compressor, so that I can sight it under the seat. They would look pretty sharp fastened to my new styled Stucchi wrap-around crash bars.

Timothy St. John

 

[A*D*A*M]

I treated myself with a pair of Vox Bel horns, sounds not much louder but The Magni pipes make up for the quietness and the Vox Bel two tone is beautiful, beside that they look loads better. Sadly they also rust easily so I'm thinking of blasting and painting as I'm tired of polishing.

 

[King of Fleece]

In another life I was a professional bass player. You can NEVER have enough amp power. Or enough horn "power". Plenty of folks have no hearing to speak of in key frequencies

 

[sib]

In another life I was a professional bass player. You can NEVER have enough amp power. Or enough horn "power". Plenty of folks have no hearing to speak of in key frequencies

Especially former professional bass players?

 

[Brian UK]

I fitted the Stebel Nautilus on the Norge. Best one for the small size, but beware the nasty Italian relay supplied. The one time I really needed it, the relay failed.

 

[Brian UK]

By the way, the ear hears in a logarithmic way too, so +3dB is only a slight increase in perceived sound level. You will just hear a 1 dB increase when listening to a single frequency signal, say 440hz.

 

[King of Fleece]

I still hear the good stuff below 150Hz ok-but from 500Hz to about 2K the curve is pretty ugly! Darn snare in my ear for, well, forever!