What else to do on a hot, sunny summer day but take the horns out to play.

We were doing a little demo of voice horns. The little Dayton Audio 16" round horn vs my Altec 803 + 290-8K driver. On voice and some bugle music.
dayton vs altec 2

Nothing but the 2 horns, a Bogen amp, Mackie mixer, wireless mic and an iPod.
The amp is switchable 70V or 8 ohm. We used 8 ohm for the Altec (no transformer) and 70V for the Dayton. Of course it was not contest. But the Dayton did OK considering the low cost, low weight, small size. Amazing for price and size.

horn test
The 803 really reaches right on out there. Were were running 100-105dB on speech 4ft in front of the horn. Almost 600ft away thru the trees and over water it was clear as a bell. No distortion, perfectly intelligible. Actually, we did not try the Dayton that far, just listened to it in the parking lot.

My buddies were pretty amazed at the Altec. Its size, weigh and most of all, clarity. "It sounds just like what you put into it" was one comment. At first I ran it with a series cap to high pass it at about 400Hz. It actually sounded better without the cap (voice only). The Dayton sounded better with the high pass cap. The little Dayton horn sound just like it looks, a nasty old public address horn. Kinda fun, really.

I was afraid of driving it too hard, but maybe should not have been. If we were at ~100dB @4', we were probably only averaging 1 or 2 watts. Did not measure power, but should have.

Near the end of the test 3 of the guys were standing talking about 25' in front of the Altec. They could hear themselves in the horn being picked up by the wireless mic, which was behind the horns. Crazy.

Thought you guys might enjoy that. We may actually try to install some Altec horns at an old NASCAR track here in North Carolina. Could be a fun project.