The loudest motorcycle alarms and alarmed disc locks on the market generally advertise around 110 to 120 decibels — roughly the territory of a car horn at close range or a rock concert. Some pagers and twin-siren systems claim slightly more, but past 120 dB the numbers get more marketing than physics, since small piezo sirens have real limits.
Here's the more useful truth: past a certain point, louder barely matters. What actually determines whether an alarm helps:
- Trigger quality. A well-tuned motion sensor that fires instantly on tampering — but not on wind or a passing truck — beats a louder siren that everyone has learned to ignore.
- Sound character. Modulated, erratic sirens draw more attention than a steady tone.
- Who hears it. An alarm in a busy street works differently than one echoing in an empty lot at 3 a.m. where no one responds.
Remember that any alarm can be muffled, ripped off, or simply endured for the sixty seconds it takes to load a bike into a van. Use the loud thing to interrupt the theft — and pair it with a silent, hidden tracker that tells your phone the moment the bike moves and shows you where it went.
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