EEVblog Electronics Community Forum

Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: neslekkim on February 05, 2016, 11:59:06 am

Title: Rigol DG4000 series, or others?
Post by: neslekkim on February 05, 2016, 11:59:06 am
Since there are campaigns on the dg4102 and dg4162 i was thinking about getting one of these, but are there other wavegens that is in the same pricerange/better performance like these?

And are these equally usable in the whole frequencyrange?, low frequencies, audio range etc as the higher frequencies?
Title: Re: Rigol DG4000 series, or others?
Post by: neslekkim on February 11, 2016, 02:11:14 pm
Also found Siglent SDG5162 and SDG2122X which seems to be in the same price range as the Rigol, but is Siglent an good product in this area?
Also seems that the cheaper SDG2000x series have some better specs, 16bit resolution, and 1.2GSa/s samplingrate compared to SDG5000 and DG4000 which are 14bit and 500MSa/s samplingrate...

Nobody with experience with these?, or did I miss an thread that discuss these?
Title: Re: Rigol DG4000 series, or others?
Post by: Macman on February 11, 2016, 02:58:19 pm
If you need the higher frequencies or more advanced modulation modes I would say go with the Rigol DG4000, if you need value I would go with the SDG2042X.

I have the Siglent SDG2042X. Although the headline spec is 1.2 GSa/s this is interpolated. In DDS mode it is 300 MSa/s and true arb mode is 75 MSa/s. The Rigol has a better selection of modulation options and the other waveforms such as square and ramp go to higher frequencies. For instance the ramp waveform only goes up to 1MHZ on the Siglent. The harmonic support on the Rigol is also better, the Siglent only allows addition of second and third harmonics.
I wouldn't bother with the SDG5162 I think that has it's own issues.

Dave did a video a short while ago where he compares the Rigol DG4000 with the SDG2000X. There is also a recent thread on the SDG2042X.
Title: Re: Rigol DG4000 series, or others?
Post by: neslekkim on February 11, 2016, 03:07:48 pm
Ah, thanks!, i was wondering if there was videos on it, found it now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mup2VnXH_k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mup2VnXH_k)

I know all to little about these things, but due to the rigol campaign the price on the dg4102 and dg4162 is kinda affordable, i know it's probably a bit on the high side for hobby, and usage, but don't want to buy something too cheap that is useless.
I have the rigol ds2202a-s, but I find the signalgen too cumbersome to use.
Title: Re: Rigol DG4000 series, or others?
Post by: Macman on February 11, 2016, 03:40:12 pm
Just be aware that in that video he was on an early version of the SDG2000X firmware and it has been improved since. There is now limited support for harmonics, many more arb waveforms and quite a few bug fixes.
Title: Re: Rigol DG4000 series, or others?
Post by: CustomEngineerer on February 12, 2016, 04:25:12 am
I have the rigol ds2202a-s, but I find the signalgen too cumbersome to use.

I made the same mistake and bought the DS2072A-S. I finally got tired of messing with the builtin generator and bought the Siglent SDG2042X. So much easier and less painful to use.