Module #4 - Magnus Danielson sawtooth phase shifter

January 31st, 2011

I keep postponing writing the build log of these modules, but here’s the 4th module in my rack, a Magnus Danielson design sawtooth phase shifter which is really an extension of the sawtooth octave doubler design on the same page. Magnus created these schematics 10 years ago to be as simple as possible, and this particular one contains an error which you should fix if you want to build this module. You’ll have to figure out for yourself, though…
I also broke out the internal comparator, which could be used to make a PWM easily.

As always, here’s a video of me playing around with the module, with an oscilloscope so you can see the waveform. Please turn on 720p for slightly better audio quality. (Should already be on by default in this embedded player.) There’s a bunch of annotations throughout the video explaining what I’m doing.

The next module I’m planning to build… Will probably be a cool one, so stay tuned.

4 Responses to “Module #4 - Magnus Danielson sawtooth phase shifter”

  1. /mr says:

    Ah, so that’s how it eventually worked when built in reality… a “sawtooth plus PWM-pulsewave” instead of a sawtooth phase shifter?

  2. nitro2k01 says:

    Yeah, that’s what the implementation of it ends up being. The sawtooth is a separate module (this is a modular synth mind you.) Having a sawtooth counteract the wave at certain places just happens to do what we want. But if you feed it a sine like I did at a later point in the video, it becomes very obvious that what you’re looking at is a PWM generator controlled by and added to the original signal.

  3. Nicolàs says:

    So… ok, I suck. Whats the error in the schematic? Please?

  4. nitro2k01 says:

    Oh, I thought I had mentioned it somewhere. The + and - inputs are swapped on the first opamp.

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