Horn/strobes have a more urgent feel to them. There’s a reason why fire alarms don’t play the sound of music from an ice cream truck.
There’s a video somewhere on YouTube that actually proves the opposite.
If anyone has it saved in their favorites, please post it.
It was a psychology experiment – which is more effective, horns or voice announcements?
I remember it depicted a room somewhere in a british building with a sounder (horn) installed.
A crowd of people were invited in to sit and do some paperwork for a survey.
The experimenters, looking through a one-way mirror, activated the sounder. Most people ignored the sound, until several minutes later someone got up and exited.
After that they replaced the sounder with a speaker, and connected it to a tape recorder and an amplifier.
They did the experiment again with a new crowd of people. They activated the tape recorder, and it played a message stating there is an emergency and to leave. Seconds later everyone got up and left the room.
Just thought I’d share The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search this article I found a while ago; it was published in 1975 in The Montréal Gazette and discusses the advantages of voice communication systems in high-rise buildings (caught my attention since they focused on Ottawa). I found it pretty interesting since it dates back to the very beginning of voice evacuation systems.
Hmm. Interesting. It just seems like horn/strobes have a more urgent feel to them than speaker/strobes.
Speakers can be just as “terrifying” & loud as horns, if programmed the right way.
I’ve heard of a building at a certain school that had both horns and speakers installed. I think that works good. The horns give a sense of urgency and the speakers give instructions.
i guess that article is true becaus with horn/strobes you cant give the all clear so walking around the entire building to say all clear and speakers can do as much as horn/strobes 
@newageserver: i will look for it any idea what the video would be called?
That doesn’t make sense. Everyone should be out of the building anyway and out of earshot.
In elementary school they would do three one-second blasts of the horns to indicate an all clear.
but threw voice evac thay can do like an all clear but watch out for more fires or somthing like that
I think horns are more likely to get people to haul ass out of the building because of how deafening that they can be. I feel less anxious or would feel less anxious around speakers.
Sometimes. Horn strobes are cheaper than speaker strobes. Horn Strobes are also cheaper than chime strobes and bell strobes.