Will sound travel further with more speakers all at the same volume?

Question

Say, if i had one speaker playing at mid-volume, and it couldn't be heard 200 metres away but could be heard on max volume. If i had, say, 5 or 10 or 100 of the same speakers stacked together playing at mid volume. Will it be heard 200 metres away? It will be louder when you're close to it, but will it travel further with more speakers?

This is a bit hard to word, say, another example. If John was 50 metres away from Jack, Jill, and James. Jack scream out as loud as he can, but john can't hear it. Jill screams as loud as she can, john can't hear it. James scream as loud as he cam, john can't hear it. If john can't hear these individual screams, is it possible for john to hear it if they all screamed together at the same time? Will their combined scream travel further?

Answer 1

If you double the number of speaker, you add 3db.

So if one speaker is 50db, 2 identical speakers will be 53db,
4 would be 56db,
8 would be 59db
etc...

So eventually you will be able to hear the sound 200 m away.

Answer 2

The sound itself won't travel any further. The farther it gets away the quieter it becomes because the energy gets more and more spread out (think of an an expanding sphere). By having twice the initial sound volume, the distance at which the the sound has dropped below the level at which you can perceive it is farther away. Assuming that the sound falls off as 1/r^2, every doubling of the volume would lead to about 41% more distance over which the sound can be heard.

Answer 3

You would have to be more precise with your measurements of sound, the way I interpret your question, is that if your volume is putting out say 50 decibels with one speaker and you then ad a whole bunch of speakers to still put out 50 decibels. I don't see how that would travel any further since it's a function of volume which determines how far away a sound can be heard, and 50 decibels is 50 decibels regardless of the number of speakers