lots of good suggestions, thanks everyone. I changed the prgram around to step thru some frequencies and found a more correct freq. And this will be ear splitting enough for my purposes. I thought the little piezo tranducer would act like a speaker, but I see now that is not really true. I have been trying different combinations of frequencies and different durations and different rates of repeating the tone. If you repeat it fast enough, it sort of rings. - the dog seems to really hate that ;-) the amp isn't really necessary, but it worked fine with a higher voltage I'm going to try the 180 out of phase technique and the push pull next. - but it's already loud enough -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu