Electronic – Recognizing low-pass filters

attinycapacitorfiltersd

Does the capacitor in this circuit serve as a low-pass filter?

The circuit:

The premise of the circuit is to be a small SD card based music player. The write
up, Simple SD Audio Player with an 8-pin IC, says that it is necessary to filter the PWM output with a low-pass filter. I believe this is usually done with a capacitor. Unfortunately, I'm not overly familiar with the mechanism that a capacitor uses to act as a low-pass filter. Is the capacitor in this circuit acting as a low-pass filter? If yes, then what value capacitor would be good as a low-pass filter for the PWM output?

Best Answer

This does not make much sense. You said in comments that in PB4 there is a inductor and not a capacitor. Unless you did a incorrect assemble of your parts it should be a capacitor. The picture shows a capacitor and makes sense to be a capacitor. This is probably a low voltage and low power application. Usually you put low-pass filters into loudspeakers when you have woofers and subwoofers which, by the way, generally need high power. So it makes more sense to be a high-pass filter as Scott said, which is represented by a series capacitor. Depending on capacitor's value will filter more or less but still remove most of bass sound and DC levels.

As for the Vcc line, there is a capacitor (left) AND a battery (right). The 3.3v label should be linked to the battery. And this capacitor is now in parallel to the load. So it is a low pass filter and this is probably to help absorbing fast transients in Vcc line and keep it stable.