Why does the music on a child’s toy sound ‘flat’ when the batteries are going flat?
In: Physics
When making sounds, the electronics need to have a reference to time, this is provided by something called an oscillator.
The oscillator gives out a very fast pulse which the audio chip can use to time the sounds.
“Okay so I need to play a 2000Hz tone and I have a 20,000Hz oscillator signal, I’ll flip my tone every 10 clock cycles.”
In audio equipment, these oscillators are generally more expensive, and are fed a stable voltage, because varying pitch sounds awful to our ears. In toy electronics, these oscillators are cheap and do the voltage regulation themselves, so when the voltage drops below a certain point they can start to slow down a lot, making the audio pitch drop.
On top of this, more expensive equipment will monitor the voltage and not allow it to run if it’s below a set threshold, cheap toys skip this component so things start going wrong.
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