Learn About Capacitors for Homemade Synthesizers

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Lorin Parker with Expert Village, and we're talking about creating a simple oscillator. I'm going to show you a couple capacitors here, now this is probably the most important component other than the chip in our oscillator. This is a ceramic disc capacitor, and this right here is what you call an electrolytic capacitor. It contains an electrolytic solution which is usually just simplified saltwater inside of a little aluminum shell. But what these guys do is they fill up like a reservoir with energy, and when the energy reaches the top of the reservoir, then they release that energy and shoot it on down the line and then they fill up again, and then they release it again. So they become the frequency determining component in this oscillator along with our resistor. But these are absolutely necessary. You can't just use a resistor, you need to have a capacitor in there creating a little bit of the lag so that your oscillator doesn't just turn on and off at frequencies that only dogs can hear, but turns on and off at the frequency you want. One thing I'd just like to note as a final note about capacitors is that these electrolytic capacitors tend to have higher values, and they'll make a lower tone, but they also have a polarity. You'll notice one side is white. That white side has a little minus on it, and that means that if you use this capacitor you're going to need to put the lead that has the white side on it toward ground or toward negative. And you'll also notice that on this one, the one that goes toward ground is shorter than the one that stays at the positive end, so you can always think the shorter lead is closer to ground, just like a shorter leg would be closer to the ground. So those are capacitors, and that's the primary component that's going to be determining the frequency of our oscillator.

Community Members who...

• Favorited this Video
• Rated This Video

Thumbs up or Thumbs down? Be the first to rate this video!

Top Tags