Purchasing a home alarm system comes with a great deal of decisions.  One of those decisions is whether or not to get a silent alarm or a loud one.  When a silent alarm is triggered a monitoring service is called.  The security monitoring service then calls the police to be dispatched and in some cases the monitoring service sends guards of their own.  With a silent alarm the idea is to catch the thief before he even knows that he is being watched. The silent alarm is discreet. The alarm is triggered and the thief continues to go through the house without a clue that authorities are on the way.  A silent alarm, if this is what you want, will also prevent the neighbors from knowing your house has been broken into. With a loud alarm the idea is to scare away the thief, wake you up, and wake up the neighbors who could be there to help you and call the police.  With a loud alarm you have less of a chance of being approached or confronted by the intruder than if you were to have a silent alarm.  Keep in mind, if you do decided to get a loud alarm then it should also be connected to a monitoring service.  If you are not at home, someone breaks in, and the alarm is triggered there is that possibility that the neighbors will think it’s a false alarm and not even bother to help.  In a sense, the loud alarm siren is like a car alarm going off and works to annoy people rather than to alert them. 

          In the end, a loud siren is better than a silent one and the LOUDER the better!  Typically sirens have a sound level between 100db and120 db and you can buy extra sirens if desired