Correct terminology: Buzzer or beeper? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 10:26:18 am
content: When designing PCB's professionally, you have to be extremely attentive to detail and accuracy. Colleagues at the company I work with call a piezo electric beeper a buzzer and this has caused some debate. They use the word buzzer for beepers on schematic diagrams and in BOMs. To my way of thinking:A buzzer makes a buzzing sound, by using contacts in a relay to repetitively make/break the circuit. Years ago, there were buzzers around, no beepers.A beeper is a device specifically designed to make a high pitch beep. eg: a piezo electric transducer, with typically a high resonant frequency.A speaker is a device design to emit varying sounds driver by an analogue waveform that varies in frequency and amplitude over time.I have seen datasheets from manufacturers where a beeper is called a buzzer, and others call a speaker a buzzer. Their so-called buzzer makes a beep sound, not a buzz sound so their datasheets are misleading.About 40 years ago the word BLEEP was popular. It has since almost gone from our Australian English language. Those who remember the Aussie rock song "Death to Disco" by Dave and the Derros will remember the classic lyric, "I better calm down or they might put in a BLEEP." So why hasn't BUZZER disappeared? Remember those 12V little white buzzers from the early late 70' early 80's? They were all called buzzers, not beepers. Few people use them these days. The last time I use one was in the ETI STAC Timer project from 1979.Today, almost all devices that have audio alert devices in them use beepers, not buzzers.Should we get our terminology correct? If I am wrong, and you think beepers are correctly called buzzers, why? Just because Wikipedia says so, does not make it correct.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 10:36:38 am
content: I think you're being picky.People often refer to cars beeping, yet a car horn is a mechanical buzzer.Lots of buzzers don't use a relay any more, but a blocking oscillator. I don't know about car horns.If this is causing a problem with documentation, then why not call it a sounder?

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 10:54:48 am
content: Buzzers are as useful today as they ever were and still have a place, we often use them on access control systems to give audible indication that a DC door strike is currently activated and the door may be opened, not as common nowadays but back in the early days many of the door strikes were AC operated and would generate the buzzing sound on their own. A simple almost silent click of a DC door strike or magnetic lock is not the same as being properly buzzed in and some people will actually stand there waiting for it.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:09:52 pm
content: Neither. It is a piezo transducer. At least that seems to be what it is called by the people who make them. Calling it a buzzer or a beeper is naming it after its function. Like calling a dog a "barker". There are more uses for a piezo transducer than beeping or buzzing.Perhaps young whippersnappers don't remember telephone modems which would typically use piezo transducers (or tiny loudspeakers) so that you could audibly monitor the connection sequence. One useful thing was being able to detect when you accidentally dialed a phone number to a human instead of another modem. You could hear the human at the other end say "Hello?"Certainly back generations ago they used self-generating sounders ("buzzers") with contacts that opened and closed etc. There are still warning "horns" in millions of buildings for the fire alarm system, etc. Many are especially nasty sounding because they are driven with mains frequency AC. So the sound has a rather raucous quality. But that is a good thing in a warning system. And for most of its history (perhaps to this day) most commodity "horns" in vehicles are actually "buzzers" with resonant horn coupling to the atmosphere.OTOH, perhaps here in 2018 perhaps the distinction and history are irrelevant?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 01:19:16 pm
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on February 05, 2018, 12:09:52 pmHow about the type with a built-in oscillator?I thought the type with a built-in oscillator, to be a buzzer or beeper and the type without, to be a piezo transducer.