Hello everyone, just wondering if there were different piezo buzzers that had a more melodious tone to them other than the standard buzzing. Is there a brand that sells these different types of buzzers? Is there a way to make them sound more pleasurable? Thanks!
I think one option would be to use a small regular speaker (I pulled one out of an old alarm clock radio) and generate the sound with tone(). You can even program it to play a medley, if you so desire.
I assume we're talking about "transducers" (speakers) that reproduce the signal that you provide (like the tone() function) rather than a "buzzer" that has a built-in tone generator and makes noise when you supply DC voltage?
The main problem is the square wave* generated by the Arduino. And, the fact that they only work at higher frequencies (usually above 2kHz) which means they can't reproduce bass, or even voice frequencies.
It also doesn't help that the Arduino square wave doesn't allow for dynamics... All tones/notes have the same-constant volume, which isn't very "musical".
A [u]piezo tweeter[/u] can reproduce high-fidelity sound when used along with a woofer and midrange (nd when you feed-it high-quality audio). But, if you play a 3kHz square wave it's going to sound "harsh" like a square wave. A regular little piezo transducer can give good quality too, but it usually can't handle the power from a hi-fi or PA system.
- [u]Audacity[/u] can generate square wave and sine wave files if you want to compare on your computer.
After trying dozens of such things I settled on CUI...
http://www.cui.com/catalog/audio/buzzers/audio-indicators/piezo
I will try to remember to post which one I normally use when I'm front of the other computer.