A horn loudspeaker with gain shading. The horn loudspeaker includes an acoustic horn. The acoustic horn includes side walls, for determining the horizontal dispersion angle of the acoustic horn, top and bottom walls, for determining the vertical dispersion angle of the acoustic horn, and a plurality of acoustic drivers coupled to the acoustic horn by a diffraction slot having segments. Each of the segments is separated from the adjacent segments by less than one half of the wavelength of the highest frequency of the operational range of the horn loudspeaker. The horn loudspeaker further includes circuitry for transmitting an audio signal to the plurality of acoustic drivers, the circuitry comprising a first signal attenuation element electrically coupling an audio signal input element and a first of the acoustic drivers.