resonator vs crystal

What's a 16th note? You working in some strange scale?

Here's all the percentages of each note up/down from a base note (A440 in this case): Pitch Percentages For Semitones And Notes · mixxxdj/mixxx Wiki · GitHub

The closest difference is around a 3%.

It's unlikely to change 0.5% between successive notes in a song, may change
over minutes if the temperature changes. But you can "just do it", and test
it yourself in a few minutes.

16th are time divisions, not pitch.

While you say to "just do it", measuring timing accuracy isn't that straightforward.. How would you do it?

I meant if you're wanting to play music, just play it and see how it sounds. I
doubt the resonator timing will be an issue.

I wanted to follow up on this. I got myself another UNO board and the resonator on it is off by approx 350hZ. This isn't allot, but it's a far cry from my first board that is only about 50hZ off. The serial numbers of the boards are pretty close, so I guess it was just a fluke that my first board had such an accurate resonator on it. Resonator jitter doesn't seem to be an issue, but temperature variations are allot greater than with a crystal. I'd still like to see a user mod option to route the USB crystal signal over to the mega chip by cutting a trace and installing a solder blob short.

Your frequency measurement might also depend upon which oscillator pin you are
probing. You will want to measure at the low-impedance output node of the oscillator,
and not the high-impedance input node, since your test device may load that pin.

I am measuring it by running Timer1 as a 16 bit counter that ticks every .5uS. I use a Dallas RTC to generate a 1Hz square wave output that I measure with the Arduino by counting how many timer ticks occur between interrupts from the square wave generator. I'm using the capture facility to snapshot the timer so that any ISR handling delays or oscillator loading don't figure into it.

afremont: Why not just build a point-to-point with a crystal and two 22pF ceramics, and "replce" the resonator with the point-to-point?

xtal
| |
c c

  • .--
    |
    gnd

123Splat:
afremont: Why not just build a point-to-point with a crystal and two 22pF ceramics, and "replce" the resonator with the point-to-point?

xtal
| |
c c

  • .--
    |
    gnd

Not enough room, for me anyway; it's just too small. I'm not really unhappy, they still work very well. I just go excited because I didn't notice it wasn't a crystal early on in my tinkering because it was right in the ballpark of what I would have expected from a cheap crystal. When I figured out it was only a resonator, then I was impressed. Just turns out I apparently just got lucky on the first one.

afremont:

123Splat:
afremont: Why not just build a point-to-point with a crystal and two 22pF ceramics, and "replce" the resonator with the point-to-point?

xtal
| |
c c

  • .--
    |
    gnd

Not enough room, for me anyway; it's just too small. I'm not really unhappy, they still work very well. I just go excited because I didn't notice it wasn't a crystal early on in my tinkering because it was right in the ballpark of what I would have expected from a cheap crystal. When I figured out it was only a resonator, then I was impressed. Just turns out I apparently just got lucky on the first one.

There are crystal resonators, there are also ceramic resonators, those are both passive resonator components that will determine the frequency if wired into an oscillator circuit as the AVR has internal to the osc pins.

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve. :wink:

Lefty

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve.

Lefty

How long has that sloppy practice been going on?

PapaG:

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve.

Lefty

How long has that sloppy practice been going on?

Not sure but, too long in my opinion. :wink:
But I will go along with your pet peeves if you go along with mine.

Lefty

retrolefty:

PapaG:

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve.

Lefty

How long has that sloppy practice been going on?

Not sure but, too long in my opinion. :wink:
But I will go along with your pet peeves if you go along with mine.

Lefty

I've always known them as "crystals" and "resonators" since I can remember. "Crystals" for bare quartz crystals, and "resonators" for either ceramic resonators, or combined quartz crystals with load capacitors. Resonator, regardless of the technology in it, is distinct from crystal in that way.

retrolefty:

PapaG:

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve.

Lefty

How long has that sloppy practice been going on?

Not sure but, too long in my opinion. :wink:
But I will go along with your pet peeves if you go along with mine.

Lefty

I'm cool with that. :slight_smile: I just wondered because I never heard crystals called anything else until recently. I thought "crystal resonator" was coined to distinguish crystals from "ceramic resonators" which are more recent than crystals as a frequency generating/controlling device.

PapaG:

retrolefty:

PapaG:

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve.

Lefty

How long has that sloppy practice been going on?

Not sure but, too long in my opinion. :wink:
But I will go along with your pet peeves if you go along with mine.

Lefty

I'm cool with that. :slight_smile: I just wondered because I never heard crystals called anything else until recently. I thought "crystal resonator" was coined to distinguish crystals from "ceramic resonators" which are more recent than crystals as a frequency generating/controlling device.

Well it would different if people short cut it to crystal Vs ceramic but instead call it crystal Vs resonator when both are resonators just rubs me the wrong way. It's not unlike when a new comer might (and often do) asks if he should "use a transistor or use a mosfet to control a relay" and one then has to explain what the T in mosfet stands for. :wink:

Lefty

retrolefty:

PapaG:

retrolefty:

PapaG:

This all too common sloppy practice of calling a crystal resonator just a crystal and a ceramic resonator just a resonator has lead many beginners off to a rather poor understanding of such components and how they actually work.

Nothing personal, just a pet peeve.

Lefty

How long has that sloppy practice been going on?

Not sure but, too long in my opinion. :wink:
But I will go along with your pet peeves if you go along with mine.

Lefty

I'm cool with that. :slight_smile: I just wondered because I never heard crystals called anything else until recently. I thought "crystal resonator" was coined to distinguish crystals from "ceramic resonators" which are more recent than crystals as a frequency generating/controlling device.

Well it would different if people short cut it to crystal Vs ceramic but instead call it crystal Vs resonator when both are resonators just rubs me the wrong way. It's not unlike when a new comer might (and often do) asks if he should "use a transistor or use a mosfet to control a relay" and one then has to explain what the T in mosfet stands for. :wink:

Lefty

Ah, I get it. I agree.

Now I'm confused. Is there a difference between a quartz crystal resonator and what you are calling a "crystal resonator"? I've been under the impression that there were two basic types here, ceramic resonators (which I have been referring to as simply resonators) and quartz crystals (that I've been just calling crystals). Is there more to this resonator/crystal thingy that I'm missing?

afremont:
Now I'm confused. Is there a difference between a quartz crystal resonator and what you are calling a "crystal resonator"? I've been under the impression that there were two basic types here, ceramic resonators (which I have been referring to as simply resonators) and quartz crystals (that I've been just calling crystals). Is there more to this resonator/crystal thingy that I'm missing?

No, one could even properly call one a quartz crystal resonator and the other a ceramic crystal resonator, as both are of a crystalline structure, just different material, quartz Vs ceramic. So one can be as specific or vague and assumptive as they want to be, but my point is/was that both are passive resonator components.

I did some digging around and it does appear that the "ceramic" family includes both quartz and PZT "resonators" and both are crystaline structures that have piezoelectric traits. But, when you say quartz then there appears to be no ambiguity. What do you folks think? :slight_smile:

So now we have to say "ceramic quartz resonators" or "ceramic PZT resonators", as well
as "quartz crystal resonators"? Can't we just add a couple more qualifiers on there too?
The more, the merrier? Got to be 100% accurate here. So, maybe "ceramic quartz
crystalline piezoelectric resonators" and "ceramic PZT crystalline piezoelectric resonators".
We say what we mean, and we mean what we say, after all.